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BlBornstjerne  Bjornson 


1832-1910 


^^   ■  William  Morton  Payne,  LL.  D. 


■1  >\ 


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Bjornstjerne  Bjornson 

1832-1910 


Translation  by 
William  Morton  Payne 


HENRIK  IBSEN.  By  Henrik 
JiEGER.  New  revised  edition. 
Photogravure  frontispiece  and 
other  illustrations.     i2mo.  $1.^0. 


C.  McClurg  &  Co.,  Publishers 
CHICAGO 


Bjornstjerne  Bjornson 

1832-1910 


BY 

WILLIAM  MORTON  PAYNE,  LL.  D. 

Translator  of  Bjornson's  "Sigurd  Slembe" 

AND  JiEGER'S  "IbSEN,"   AUTHOR  OF 

"Little  Leaders,"  etc. 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 

1910 


Copyright,  igio 

BY 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 
Published  May  14, 1910 


Etft  lafctftlit  ^tttn 

R.  R.  DONNELLEY  &  SONS  COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


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Co  iSlais 


INTRODUCTORY   NOTE 

When  the  date  of  Bjomson's  seventieth 
birthday  drew  near  at  the  close  of  1902,  the 
present  writer,  who  had  been  from  boyhood 
a  devoted  admirer  of  the  great  Norwegian, 
wished  to  make  an  American  contribution 
to  the  world-wide  tribute  of  gratitude  and 
affection  which  the  then  approaching  anni- 
versary was  sure  to  evoke.  The  outcome 
of  that  wish  was  an  essay,  summarizing 
Bjomson's  life  and  work,  published  in  "The 
International  Quarterly,"  March,  1903.  The 
essay  then  written  forms  the  substance  of 
the  present  publication,  although  several 
additions  have  been  made  in  the  way  of 
translation,  anecdote,  and  the  consideration 
of  Bjomson's  later  productions.  So  small 
a  book  as  this  is,  of  course,  hopelessly  in- 
adequate to  make  more  than  the  most  super- 
ficial sort  of  survey  of  the  life  work  of  that 
masterful  personality  whose  recent  death  is 
so  heavy  a  loss  to  all  mankind. 

W.  M.  P. 
Chicago,  May,  ipio. 


BJORNSTJERNE   BJORNSON 
1832-1910 

EIGHT  years  ago,  taking  a  bird's-eye 
view  of  the  mountain  peaks  of  con- 
temporary literature,  and  writing 
with  particular  reference  to  Bjornson's 
seventieth  birthday,  it  seemed  proper  to 
make  the  following  remarks  about  the 
most  famous  European  authors  then 
numbered  among  living  men.  If  one  were 
asked  for  the  name  of  the  greatest  man 
of  letters  still  living  in  the  world,  the 
possible  claimants  to  the  distinction  would 
hardly  be  more  than  five  in  number.  If 
it  were  a  question  of  poetry  alone,  Swin- 
burne would  have  to  be  named  first,  with 
Carducci  for  a  fairly  close  second.  But  if 
we  take  literature  in  its  larger  sense,  as 
including  all  the  manifestations  of  creative 
activity  in  language,  and  if  we  insist,  fur- 
9 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

thermore,  that  the  man  singled  out  for 
this  preeminence  shall  stand  in  some  vital 
relation  to  the  intellectual  life  of  his  time, 
and  exert  a  forceful  influence  upon  the 
thought  of  the  present  day,  the  choice 
must  rather  be  made  among  the  three 
giants  of  the  north  of  Europe,  falling,  as 
it  may  be,  upon  the  great-hearted  Rus- 
sian emotionalist  who  has  given  us  such 
deeply  moving  portrayals  of  the  life  of 
the  modern  world ;  or  upon  the  passionate 
Norwegian  idealist  whose  finger  has  so 
unerringly  pointed  out  the  diseased  spots 
in  the  social  organism,  earning  by  his 
moral  surgery  the  name  of  pessimist,  des- 
pite his  declared  faith  in  the  redemption 
of  mankind  through  truth  and  freedom 
and  love;  or,  perchance,  upon  that  other 
great  Norwegian,  equally  fervent  in  his 
devotion  to  the  same  ideals,  and  far  more 
sympathetic  in  his  manner  of  inculcating 
them    upon    his    readers,    who    has    just 

10 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

rounded  out  his  scriptural  tale  of  three 
score  years  and  ten,  an^,  in  commemora- 
tion of  the  anniversary,  is  now  made  the 
recipient  of  such  a  tribute  of  grateful  and 
whole-souled  admiration  as  few  men  have 
ever  won,  and  none  have  better  deserved. 
It  would  be  certainly  invidious,  and  prob- 
ably futile,  to  attempt  a  nice  comparative 
estimate  of  the  services  of  these  three  men 
to  the  common  cause  of  humanity ;  let  us 
be  content  with  the  admission  that 
Bjornstjerne  Bjornson  is  primus  inter 
pares,  and  make  no  attempt  to  exalt  him 
at  the  expense  of  his  great  contempora- 
ries. Writing  now  eight  years  later,  at 
the  time  when  Bjornson's  death  has 
plunged  his  country  and  the  world  in 
mourning,  it  is  impressive  to  note  that  of 
the  five  men  constituting  the  group  above 
designated,  Tolstoy  alone  survives  to  carry 
on  the  great  literary  tradition  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

II 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

It  will  be  well,  however,  to  make  cer- 
tain distinctions  between  the  life  work  of 
Bjornson  and  that  of  the  two  men  whom 
a  common  age  and  common  aims  bring 
into  inevitable  association  with  him. 
These  distinctions  are  chiefly  two, — one 
of  them  is  that  while  Tolstoy  and  Ibsen 
grew  to  be  largely  cosmopolitan  in  their 
outlook,  Bjornson  has  much  more  closely 
maintained  throughout  his  career  the  na- 
tional, or,  at  any  rate,  the  racial  stand- 
point. The  other  is  that  while  Tolstoy 
and  Ibsen  presently  became,  the  one  indif- 
ferent to  artistic  expression,  and  the  other 
baldly  prosaic  where  he  was  once  deeply 
poetical,  Bjornson  preserved  the  poetic  im- 
pulse of  his  youth,  and  continued  to  give 
it  play  even  in  his  envisagement  of  the 
most  practical  modern  problems.  Let  us 
enlarge  a  little  upon  these  two  themes. 
Ernest  Renan,  speaking  at  the  funeral  of 
Tourguenieff,  described  the  deceased  nov- 

12 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

elist  as  "the  incarnation  of  a  whole  peo- 
ple." Even  more  fittingly  might  the 
phrase  be  applied  to  Bjornson,  for  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  anywhere  else  in 
modern  literature  a  figure  so  completely 
and  profoundly  representative  of  his  race. 
In  the  frequently  quoted  words  of  Dr. 
Brandes,  to  speak  the  name  of  Bjornson 
in  any  assembly  of  his  countrymen  is  like 
"hoisting  the  Norwegian  flag."  It  has 
been  maliciously  added  that  mention  of 
his  name  is  also  like  flaunting  a  red  flag 
in  the  sight  of  a  considerable  proportion 
of  the  assembly,  for  Bjornson  has  always 
been  a  fighter  as  well  as  an  artist,  and  it 
has  been  his  self-imposed  mission  to 
arouse  his  fellow  countrymen  from  their 
mental  sluggishness  no  less  than  to  give 
creative  embodiment  to  their  types  of 
character  and  their  ideal  aspirations.  But 
whatever  the  opposition  aroused  by  his 
political  and  social  radicalism,  even  his 
13 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

opponents  have  been  constrained  to  feel 
that  he  was  the  mouthpiece  of  their  race 
as  no  other  Norwegian  before  him  had 
been,  and  that  he  has  voiced  whatever  is 
deepest  and  most  enduring  in  the  Nor- 
wegian temper.  Powerful  as  has  been  his 
appeal  to  the  intellect  and  conscience  of 
the  modern  world  at  large,  it  has  always 
had  a  special  note  of  admonition  or  of 
cheer  for  his  own  people.  With  reference 
to  the  second  of  our  two  themes,  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  say  that,  although  the  form  of 
verse  was  almost  wholly  abandoned  by 
him  during  the  latter  half  of  his  life,  the 
breath  of  poetry  never  ceased  to  exhale 
from  his  work,  and  the  lyric  exuberance 
of  his  later  prose  still  recalls  to  us  the 
singer  of  the  sixties. 

Few  productions  of  modem  literature 
have  proved  as  epoch-making  as  the  mod- 
est little  volume  called  "Synnove  Solbak- 
ken,"  which  appeared  in  the  book  shops  of 
14 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

Christiania  and  Copenhagen  in  1857.  It 
was  a  simple  tale  of  peasant  life,  an  idyl 
of  the  love  of  a  boy  and  a  girl,  but  it  was 
absolutely  new  in  its  style,  and  in  its 
intimate  revelation  of  the  Norwegian 
character.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
until  the  year  18 14,  Norway  had  for  cen- 
turies been  politically  united  with  Den- 
mark, and  that  Copenhagen  had  been  the 
common  literary  centre  of  the  two  coun- 
tries. To  that  city  Norwegian  writers 
had  gravitated  as  naturally  as  French 
writers  gravitate  to  Paris.  There  had  re- 
sulted from  this  condition  of  things  a  lit- 
erature which,  although  it  owed  much  to 
men  of  Norwegian  birth,  was  essentially 
a  Danish  literature,  and  must  properly  be 
so  styled.  That  literature  could  boast,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
an  interesting  history  comparable  in  its 
antiquity  with  the  greater  literatures  of 
Europe,  and  a  brilliant  history  for  at  least 
IS 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

a  hundred  years  past.  But  old  literatures 
are  sure  to  become  more  or  less  sophisti- 
cated and  trammelled  by  traditon,  and  to 
this  rule  Danish  literature  was  no  excep- 
tion. When  the  constitution  of  Eidsvold, 
in  1 8 14,  separated  Norway  from  Den- 
mark, and  made  it  into  an  independent 
kingdom  (save  for  the  forced  Swedish 
partnership),  the  country  had  practically 
no  literary  tradition  save  that  which  cen- 
tred about  the  Danish  capital.  She  might 
claim  to  have  been  the  native  country  of 
many  Danish  writers,  even  of  Ludvig 
Holberg,  the  greatest  writer  that  the 
Scandinavian  peoples  have  yet  produced, 
but  she  could  point  to  nothing  that  might 
fairly  be  called  a  Norwegian  literature. 
The  young  men  of  the  rising  generation 
were  naturally  much  concerned  about  this, 
and  a  sharp  divergence  of  opinion  arose 
as  to  the  means  Whereby  the  interests  of 
Norwegian  literature  might  be  furthered, 
16 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

and  the  aims  which  it  should  have  in  view. 
One  party  urged  that  the  Hterature  should 
break  loose  from  its  traditional  past,  and 
aim  at  the  cultivation  of  an  exclusively 
national  spirit.  The  other  party  declared 
such  a  course  to  be  folly,  contending  that 
literature  must  be  a  product  of  gradual 
development  rather  than  of  set  volition, 
and  that,  despite  the  shifting  of  the  politi- 
cal kaleidoscope,  the  national  literature 
was  so  firmly  rooted  in  its  Danish  past 
that  its  natural  evolution  must  be  an  out- 
growth from  all  that  had  gone  before. 

Each  of  these  parties  found  a  vigorous 
leader,  the  cause  of  ultra-Norwegianism 
being  championed  by  Wergeland,  an  er- 
ratic person  in  whom  the  spark  of  genius 
burned,  but  who  never  found  himself,  ar- 
tistically speaking.  The  champion  of  the 
conservatives  was  Welhaven,  a  polished 
writer  of  singular  charm  and  much  force, 
philosophical   in   temper,   whose  graceful 

''7 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

verse  and  acute  criticism  upheld  by  both 
precept  and  practice  the  traditional  stand- 
ards of  culture.  Each  of  these  men  had 
his  followers,  who  proved  in  many  cases 
more  zealous  than  their  leaders.  The 
period  of  the  thirties  and  forties  was  dom- 
inated by  this  Wergeland-Welhaven  con- 
troversy, which  engendered  much  bitter- 
ness of  feeling,  and  which  constitutes  the 
capital  fact  in  Norwegian  literary  history 
before  the  appearance  of  Ibsen  and  Bjorn- 
son  upon  the  scene.  A  sort  of  parallel 
might  be  drawn  for  American  readers  by 
taking  two  such  men  as  Whitman  and 
Longfellow,  opposing  them  to  one  another 
in  the  most  outspoken  fashion,  assuming 
for  both  a  sharply  polemic  manner,  and 
ranging  among  their  respective  followers 
all  the  other  writers  of  their  time.  Then 
imagine  the  issue  between  them  to  be 
drawn  not  only  in  the  field  of  letters,  but 
also  in  the  pulpit,  the  theatre,  and  the  po- 
i8 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

litical  arena,  and  some  slight  notion  may 
be  obtained  of  the  condition  of  afifairs 
which  preceded  the  advent  of  Bjornson 
and  the  true  birth  of  Norwegian  Hterature 
with  "Synnove  Solbakken." 

The  work  which  was  thus  destined  to 
mark  the  opening  of  a  new  era  in  Nor- 
wegian letters  was  written  in  the  twenty- 
fifth  year  of  its  author's  life.  The  son  of 
a  country  pastor,  Bjornstjerne  Bjornson 
was  born  at  Kvikne,  December  8,  1832. 
At  the  age  of  six,  his  father  was  trans- 
ferred to  a  new  parish  in  the  Romsdal, 
one  of  the  most  picturesque  regions  in 
Norway.  The  impression  made  upon  his 
sensitive  nature  by  these  surroundings 
was  deep  and  enduring.  Looking  back 
upon  his  boyhood  he  speaks  with  strong 
emotion  of  the  evenings  when  "I  stood 
and  watched  the  sunlight  play  upon  moun- 
tain and  fiord,  until  I  wept,  as  if  I  had 
done  something  wrong,  and  when,  borne 
19 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

down  upon  my  ski  into  one  valley  or  an- 
other I  could  stand  as  if  spellbound  by  a 
beauty,  by  a  longing  that  I  could  not  ex- 
plain, but  that  was  so  great  that  along 
with  the  highest  joy  I  had,  also,  the  deep- 
est sense  of  imprisonment  and  sorrow." 
This  is  the  mood  which  was  to  be  given 
utterance  in  that  wonderful  lyric,  "Over 
the  Lofty  Mountains,"  in  which  all  the 
ardor  and  the  longings  of  passionate  and 
impatient  youth  find  the  most  appealing 
expression.  The  song  is  found  in  "Arne," 
and  may  be  thus  reproduced,  after  a  fash- 
ion, in  the  English  language. 

"Often  I  wonder  what  there  may  be 
Over  the  lofty  mountains. 
Here  the  snow  is  all  I  see, 
Spread  at  the  foot  of  the  dark  green  tree; 
Sadly  I  often  ponder, 
Would  I  were  over  yonder. 
"Strong  of  wing  ^ars  the  eagle  high 
Over  the  lofty  mountains, 
Glad  of  the  new  day  soars  to  the  sky, 
Wild  in  pursuit  of  his  prey  doth  fly; 
Pauses,  and,  fearless  of  danger, 
Scans  the  far  coasts  of  the  stranger. 
20 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

"The  apple-tree,  whose  thoughts  ne'er  fly 
Over  the  lofty  mountains, 
Leaves,  when  the  summer  days  draw  nigh, 
Patiently  waits  for  the  time  when  high 
The  birds  in  its  boughs  shall  be  swinging. 
Yet  will  know  not  what  they  are  singing. 

"He  who  has  yearned  so  long  to  go 
Over  the  lofty  mountains — 
He  whose  visions  and  fond  hopes  grow 
Dim,  with  the  years  that  so  restless  flow — 
Knows  what  the  birds  are  singing. 
Glad  in  the  tree-tops  swinging. 

"Why,  oh  bird,  dost  thou  hither  fare 

Over  the  lofty  mountains? 
Surely  it  must  be  better  there, 
Broader  the  view  and  freer  the  air; 

Com'st  thou  these  longings  to  bring  me; 

These  only,  and  nothing  to  wing  me? 

"Oh,  shall  I  never,  never  go 

Over  the  lofty  mountains! 
Must  all  my  thoughts  and  wishes  so 
Held  in  these  walls  of  ice  and  snow 

Here  be  imprisoned  forever? 

Till  death  shall  I  flee  them  never? 

"Hence!  I  will  hence!  Oh,  so  far  from  here, 
Over  the  lofty  mountains! 
Here  't  is  so  dull,  so  unspeakably  drear; 
Young  is  my  heart  and  free  from  fear — 
Better  the  walls  to  be  scaling 
Than  here  in  my  prison  lie  wailing. 
21 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

"One  day,  I  know,  shall  my  soul  free  roam 
Over  the  lofty  mountains. 
Oh,  my  God,  fair  is  thy  home. 
Ajar  is  the  door  for  all  who  come; 
Guard  it  for  me  yet  longer. 
Till     my     soul     through     striving     grows 
stronger." 

At  the  age  of  eleven  Bjornson's  school 
days  began  at  Molde,  and  were  continued 
at  Christiania  in  a  famous  preparatory 
school,  where  he  had  Ibsen  for  a  comrade. 
He  entered  the  university  in  his  twentieth 
year,  but  his  career  was  not  brilliant  from 
a  scholastic  point  of  view,  and  he  was  too 
much  occupied  with  his  own  intellectual 
concerns  to  be  a  model  student.  From  his 
matriculation  in  1852,  to  the  appearance  of 
his  first  book  in  1857,  he  was  occupied 
with  many  sorts  of  literary  experiments, 
and  became  actively  engaged  in  journal- 
ism. The  theatre,  in  particular,  attracted 
him,  for  the  theatre  was  one  of  the  chief 
foci  of  the  intellectual  life  of  his  country 
(as  it  should  be  in  every  country),  and  he 
22 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

plunged  into  dramatic  criticism  as  the 
avowed  partisan  of  Norwegian  ideals, 
holding  himself,  in  some  sort,  the  suc- 
cessor of  Wergeland,  who  had  died  about 
ten  years  earlier.  Before  becoming  a 
dramatic  critic,  he  had  essayed  dramatic 
authorship,  and  the  acceptance  by  the  thea- 
tre of  his  juvenile  play,  "Valborg,"  had 
led  to  a  somewhat  unusual  result.  He 
was  given  a  free  ticket  of  admission,  and 
a  few  weeks  of  theatre-going  opened  his 
eyes  to  the  defects  of  his  own  accepted 
work,  which  he  withdrew  before  it  had 
been  inflicted  upon  the  public.  The  full 
consciousness  of  his  poetical  calling  came 
to  him  upon  his  return  from  a  student 
gathering  at  the  university  town  of  Up- 
sala,  whither  he  had  gone  as  a  special  cor- 
respondent. "When  I  came  home  from  the 
journey,"  he  says,  "I  slept  three  whole 
days  with  a  few  brief  intervals  for  eating 
and  conversation.  Then  I  wrote  down 
23 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

my  impressions  of  the  journey,  but  just 
because  I  had  first  lived  and  then  written, 
the  account  got  style  and  color;  it  at- 
tracted attention,  and  made  me  all  the 
more  certain  that  the  hour  had  come.  I 
packed  up,  went  home,  thought  it  all  over, 
wrote  and  rewrote  'Between  the  Battles* 
in  a  fortnight,  and  travelled  to  Copen- 
hagen with  the  completed  piece  in  my 
trunk;  I  would  be  a  poet.*/  He  then  set 
to  writing  "Synnove  Solbakken,"  pub- 
lished it  in  part  as  a  newspaper  serial,  and 
then  in  book  form,  in  the  autumn  of  1857. 
He  had  "commenced  author"  in  good 
earnest. 

^.  The  next  fifteen  years  of  Bjornson's  life 
were  richly  productive.  Within  a  single 
year  he  had  published  "Arne,"  the  second 
of  his  peasant  idyls  and  perhaps  the  most 
remarkable  of  them  all,  and  had  also  pub- 
lished two  brief  dramas,  "Halte-Hulda" 
and  the  one  already  mentioned  as  the 
24 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

achievement  of  fourteen  feverish  days. 
The  remaining  product  of  the  fifteen  years 
includes  two  more  prose  idyls,  "A  Happy 
Boy"  and  'The  Fisher  Maiden"  (with 
a  considerable  number  of  small  pieces 
similar  in  character) ;  three  more  plays 
drawn  from  the  treasury  of  old  Norse 
history,  "King  Sverre,"  "Sigurd  Slem- 
be,"  and  "Sigurd  Jorsalfar";  a  dramat- 
ic setting  of  the  story  of  "Mary  Stuart 
in  Scotland";  a  little  social  comedy, 
"The  Newly  Married  Couple,"  which 
offers  a  foretaste  of  his  later  exclusive 
preoccupation  with  modern  life;  "Arnljot 
Gelline,"  his  only  long  poem,  a  wild 
narrative  of  the  clash  between  heath- 
endom and  the  Christian  faith  in  the 
days  of  Olaf  the  Holy;  and,  last  but  by 
no  means  least,  the  collection  of  his 
"  Poems  and  Songs."  Thus  at  the  age  of 
forty,  Bjornson  found  himself  with  a 
dozen  books  to  his  credit,  books  which 
25 


BJ5RNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

had  stirred  his  fellow  countrymen  as  no 
other  books  had  ever  stirred  them,  arous- 
ing them  to  the  full  consciousness  of  their 
own  nature  and  of  its  roots  in  their  own 
heroic  past.  He  had  become  the  voice  of 
his  people  as  no  one  had  been  before  him, 
the  singer  of  all  that  was  noble  in  Nor- 
wegian aspiration,  the  sympathetic  delin- 
eator of  all  that  was  essential  in  Nor- 
wegian character.  He  had,  in  short, 
created  a  national  literature  where  none 
had  before  existed,  and  he  was  still  in  his 
early  prime. 

The  collected  edition  of  Bjornson's 
"Tales,"  published  in  1872,  together  with 
"The  Bridal  March,"  separately  published 
in  the  following  year,  gives  us  a  complete 
representation  of  that  phase  of  his  genius 
which  is  best  known  to  the  world  at  large. 
Here  are  five  stories  of  considerable 
length,  and  a  number  of  slighter  sketches, 
in  which  the  Norwegian  peasant  is  por- 
26 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

trayed  with  intimate  and  loving  knowl- 
edge. The  peasant  tale  was  no  new  thing 
in  European  literature,  for  the  names  of 
Auerbach  and  George  Sand,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  many  others,  at  once  come  to  the 
mind.  In  Scandinavian  literature,  its 
chief  representative  had  been  the  Danish 
novelist,  Blicher,  who  had  written  with 
insight  and  charm  of  the  peasantry  of  Jut- 
land. But  in  the  treatment  of  peasant  life 
by  most  of  Bjornson's  predecessors  there 
had  been  too  much  of  the  de  haut  en  has 
attitude;  the  peasant  had  been  drawn  from 
the  outside,  viewed  philosophically,  and 
invested  with  artificial  sentiment.  Bjorn- 
son  was  too  near  to  his  own  country  folk 
to  commit  such  faults  as  these;  he  was 
himself  of  peasant  stock,  and  all  his  boy- 
hood life  had  been  spent  in  close  associa- 
tion with  men  who  wrested  a  scanty  living 
from  an  ungrateful  soil.  Although  a  poet 
by  instinct,  he  was  not  afraid  of  realism, 
27 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

and  did  not  shrink  from  giving  the  brutal 
aspects  of  peasant  life  a  place  upon  his 
canvas.  In  emphasizing  the  character- 
istics of  reticence  and  naivete  he  really 
discovered  the  Norwegian  peasant  for  lit- 
erary purposes.  Beneath  the  words 
spoken  by  his  characters  we  are  constantly 
made  to  realize  that  there  are  depths  of 
feeling  that  remain  unexpressed;  whether 
from  native  pride  or  from  a  sense  of  the 
inadequacy  of  mere  words  to  set  forth  a 
critical  moment  of  life,  his  men  and 
women  are  distinguished  by  the  most 
laconic  utterance,  yet  their  speech  always 
has  dramatic  fitness  and  bears  the  stamp 
of  sincerity.  Jaeger  speaks  of  the  mani- 
fold possibilities  of  this  laconic  method 
in  the  following  words: — 

"It  is  as  if  the  author  purposely  set  in  mo- 
tion the  reader's  fancy  and  feeling  that  they 
might  do  their  own  work.  The  greatest  poet 
is  he  who  understands  how  to  awaken  fancy 
and    feeling   to    their   highest   degree    of   self- 

28 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

activity.  And  this  is  Bjornson's  greatness  in 
his  peasant  novels,  that  he  has  poured  from  his 
horn  of  plenty  a  wealth  of  Situations  and  mo- 
tives that  hold  the  reader's  mind  and  burn 
themselves  into  it,  that  become  his  personal 
possession  just  because  the  author  has  known 
how  to  suggest  so  much  in  so  few  words." 

In  some  respects,  the  little  sketch  called 
"The  Father"  is  the  supreme  example  of 
Bjornson's  artistry  in  this  kind.  There 
are  only  a  few  pages  in  all,  but  they  em- 
body the  tragedy  of  a  lifetime.  The  little 
work  is  a  literary  gem  of  the  purest  water, 
and  it  reveals  the  whole  secret  of  the  au- 
thor's genius  as  displayed  in  his  early 
tales.  It  is  by  these  tales  of  peasant  life 
that  Bjornson  is  best  known  outside  of  his 
own  country ;  one  may  almost  say  that  it 
is  by  them  alone  that  he  is  really  familiar 
to  English  readers.  A  free  translation  of 
"Synnove  Solbakken"  was  made  as  early 
as  1858,  by  Mary  Howitt,  and  published 
under  the  title  of  "Trust  and  Trial." 
Translations  of  the  other  tales  were  made 
29 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

soon  after  their  original  appearance,  and  in 
some  instances  have  been  multipHed.  It  is 
thus  a  noteworthy  fact  that  Bjornson,  al- 
though four  years  the  junior  of  Ibsen,  en- 
joyed a  vogue  among  English  readers  for 
a  score  of  years  during  which  the  name  of 
Ibsen  was  absolutely  unknown  to  them. 
The  whirligig  of  time  has  brought  in  its 
revenges  of  late  years,  and  the  long  neg- 
lected older  author  has  had  more  than  the 
proportional  share  of  our  attention  than  is 
fairly  his  due. 

In  his  delineation  of  the  Norwegian 
peasant  character,  Bjornson  was  greatly 
aided  by  the  study  of  the  sagas,  which  he 
had  read  with  enthusiasm  from  his  earliest 
boyhood.  Upon  them  his  style  was  largely 
formed,  and  their  vivid  dramatic  represen- 
tation of  the  life  of  the  early  Norsemen 
impressed  him  profoundly,  shaping  both 
his  ideals  and  the  form  of  their  expression. 
The  modern  Scandinavian  may  well  be  en- 
30 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

vied  for  his  literary  inheritance  from  the 
heroic  past.  No  other  European  has  any- 
thing to  compare  with  it  for  clean-cut 
vigor  and  wealth  of  romantic  material. 
The  literature  which  blossomed  in  Iceland 
and  flourished  for  two  or  three  centuries 
wherever  Norsemen  made  homes  for 
themselves  offers  a  unique  intellectual 
phenomenon,  for  nothing  like  their  record 
remains  to  us  from  any  other  primitive 
people.    This 

"Tale  of  the  Northland  of  old 
And  the  undying  glory  of  dreams," 

proved  a  lasting  stimulus  to  Bjornson's 
genius,  and,  during  the  early  period  of  his 
career,  which  is  now  under  review,  it 
made  its  influence  felt  alike  in  his  tales, 
his  dramas,  and  his  songs.  "To  see  the 
peasant  in  the  light  of  the  sagas  and  the 
sagas  in  the  light  of  the  peasant"  he  de- 
clared to  be  the  fundamental  principle  of 
his  literary  method. 

31 


/ 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

It  has  been  seen  that  during  the  fifteen 
years  which  made  Bjomson  in  so  peculiar 
a  sense  the  spokesman  of  his  race,  he 
wrote  no  less^  thaiL£3ife.sagadramas.  The 
first  two  of  these  works,  "Between  the 
Battles"  and  "Halte-Hulda,"  are  rather 
slight  performances,  and  the  third,  "  King 
Sverre,"  although  a  more  extended  work, 
is  not  particularly  noteworthy.  The  grim- 
ness  of  the  Viking  life  is  softened  by  ro- 
mantic coloring,  and  the  poet  has  not  freed 
himself  from  the  influence  of  Oehlen- 
schlaeger.  But  in  "Sigurd  Slembe"  he 
found  a  subject  entirely  worthy  of  his 
genius,  and  produced  one  of  the  noblest 
masterpieces  of  all  modem  literature. 
This  largely  planned  and  magnificently 
executed  dramatic  trilogy  was  written  in 
Munich,  and  published  in  1862.  The  ma- 
terial is  found  in  the  "Heimskringla,"  but 
the  author  has  used  the  prerogative  of  the 
artist    to    simplify   the   historical    outline 

32 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

thus  offered  into  a  superb  imaginative 
creation,  rich  in  human  interest,  and 
powerful  in  dramatic  presentation.  The 
story  is  concerned  with  the  efforts  of 
Sigurd,  nicknamed  "Slembe,"  to  obtain 
the  succession  to  the  throne  of  Norway 
during  the  first  half  of  the  twelfth  century. 
He  was  a  son  of  King  Magnus  Barfod, 
and,  although  of  illegitimate  birth,  might 
legally  make  this  claim.  The  secret  of  his 
birth  has  been  kept  from  him  until  he  has 
come  to  manhood,  and  the  revelation  of 
this  secret  by  his  mother  is  made  in  the 
first  section  of  the  trilogy,  which  is  a  sin- 
gle act,  written  in  blank  verse.  Recog- 
nizing the  futility  of  urging  his  birthright 
at  this  time,  he  starts  off  to  win  fame  as  a 
crusader,  the  sort  of  fame  that  haloed 
Sigurd  Jorsalfar,  then  king  of  Norway. 
The  remainder  of  the  work  is  in  prose,  and 
was,  in  fact,  written  before  this  poetical 
prologue.  The  second  section,  in  three 
33 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

acts,  deals  with  an  episode  in  the  Orkneys, 
five  years  later.  Sigurd  has  not  even  then 
journeyed  to  the  Holy  Land,  but  he  has 
wandered  elsewhere  afar,  thwarted  ambi- 
tion and  the  sense  of  injustice  ever  gnaw- 
ing at  his  heart.  He  becomes  entangled 
in  a  feudal  quarrel  concerning  the  rule  of 
the  islands.  Both  parties  seek  to  use  him 
for  their  purposes,  but  in  the  end,  although 
leadership  is  in  his  grasp,  he  tears  himself 
away,  appalled  by  the  revelation  of  crime 
and  treachery  in  his  surroundings.  In 
this  section  of  the  work  we  have  the 
subtly  conceived  and  Hamlet-like  figure  of 
Earl  Harald,  in  whose  interest  Frakark, 
a  Norse  Lady  Macbeth,  plots  the  murder 
of  Earl  Paul,  only  to  bring  upon  Harald 
himself  the  terrible  death  that  she  has 
planned  for  his  brother.  Here,  also,  we 
have  the  gracious  maiden  figure  of  Aud- 
hild,  perhaps  the  loveliest  of  all  Bjorn- 
son's  delineations  of  womanhood,  a  figure 
34 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

worthy  to  be  ranked  with  the  heroines  of 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe,  who  remains 
sweet  and  fragrant  in  our  memory  forever 
after.  With  the  mutual  love  of  Sigurd 
and  Audhild  comes  the  one  hour  of  sun- 
shine in  both  their  lives,  but  the  love  is 
destined  to  end  in  a  noble  renunciation 
and  to  leave  only  a  hallowed  memory  in 
token  of  its  brief  existence. 

Ten  more  years  as  a  crusader  and  a 
wanderer  over  the  face  of  the  earth  pass 
by  before  we  meet  with  Sigurd  again  in 
the  third  section  of  the  trilogy.  But  his 
resolution  is  taken.  He  has  returned  to 
his  native  land,  and  will  claim  his  own. 
The  land  is  now  ruled  by  Harald  Gille, 
who  is,  like  Sigurd  Slembe,  an  illegitimate 
son  of  Magnus  Barfod,  and  who,  during 
the  last  senile  years  of  Sigurd  Jorsalfar's 
life,  had  won  the  recognition  that  Sigurd 
Slembe  might  have  won  had  he  not  missed 
the  chance,  and  been  acknowledged  as  the 
35 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

king's  brother.  When  the  king  died,  he 
left  a  son  named  Magnus,  who  should 
have  been  his  successor,  but  whom  Harald 
Gille  seized,  blinded,  and  imprisoned  that 
he  might  himself  occupy  the  throne.  The 
five  acts  of  this  third  section  of  the 
trilogy  cover  the  last  two  years  of  Sigurd 
Slembe's  life,  years  during  which  he  seeks 
to  gain  his  end,  first  by  conciliation,  and 
afterwards,  maddened  by  the  base  treach- 
ery of  the  king  and  his  followers,  by  as- 
sassination and  violence.  He  has  become 
a  hard  man,  but,  however  wild  his  schemes 
of  revenge,  and  however  desperate  his 
measures,  he  retains  our  sympathy  to  the 
end  because  we  feel  that  circumstances 
have  made  him  the  ravager  of  his  country, 
and  that  his  underlying  motive  all  along 
has  not  been  a  merely  personal  ambition, 
but  an  immense  longing  to  serve  his  peo- 
ple, and  to  rule  them  with  justice  and 
wisdom.  The  final  scene  of  all  has  a 
36 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

strange  and  solemn  beauty.  It  is  on  the 
eve  of  the  battle  in  which  Sigurd  is  to  be 
captured  and  put  to  death  by  his  enemies. 
The  actual  manner  of  his  death  was  too 
horrible  even  for  the  purposes  of  tragedy ; 
and  the  poet  has  chosen  the  better  part  in 
ending  the  play  with  a  foreshadowing  of 
the  outcome.  Sigurd  has  made  his  last 
stand,  his  Danish  allies  have  deserted  him, 
and  he  well  knows  what  will  be  the  next 
day's  issue.  And  here  we  have  one  of  the 
noblest  illustrations  in  all  literature  of  that 
Versohnung  which  is  the  last  word  of 
tragic  art.  For  in  this  supreme  hour  the 
peace  of  mind  which  he  has  sought  for  so 
many  years  comes  to  him  when  least  ex- 
pected, and  all  the  tempests  of  life  are 
stilled.  That  reconciliation  which  the 
hour  of  approaching  death  brings  to  men 
whose  lives  have  been  set  at  tragic  pitch, 
has  come  to  him  also;  he  now  sees  that  this 
was  the  inevitable  end,  and  the  recognition 
37 


BJ5RNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

of  the  fitness  with  which  events  have 
shaped  themselves  brings  with  it  an  exal- 
tation of  soul  in  which  life  is  seen  revealed 
in  its  true  aspect.  No  longer  veiled  in  the 
mists  which  have  hitherto  hidden  it  from 
his  passionate  gaze,  he  takes  note  of  what 
it  really  is,  and  casts  it  from  him.  In  this 
hour  of  passionless  contemplation  such  a 
renunciation  is  not  a  thing  torn  from  the 
reluctant  soul,  but  the  clear  solution,  so 
long  sought,  of  the  problem  so  long  blind- 
ly attempted.  That  which  his  passion- 
enslaved  self  has  so  struggled  to  avert,  his 
higher  self,  at  last  set  free,  calmly  and 
gladly  accepts. 

"What  miracle  is  this?  for  in  the  hour  I 
prayed,  the  prayer  was  granted!  Peace,  per- 
fect peace!  Then  I  will  go  to-morrow  to  my 
last  battle  as  to  the  altar;  peace  shall  at  last 
be  mine  for  all  my  longings. 

"How  this  autumn  evening  brings  reconcilia- 
tion to  my  soul!  Sun  and  wave  and  shore  and 
sea  flow  all  together,  as  in  the  thought  of  God 
all  others;  never  yet  has  it  seemed  so  fair  to 
me.     But  it  is  not  mine  to  rule  over  this  lovely 

38 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

land.  How  greatly  I  have  done  it  ill!  But 
how  has  it  all  so  come  to  pass?  for  in  my  wan- 
derings I  saw  thy  mountains  in  every  sky,  I 
yearned  for  home  as  a  child  longs  for  Christ- 
mas, yet  I  came  no  sooner,  and  when  at  last 
I  came,  I  gave  thee  wound  upon  wound. 

"  But  now,  in  contemplative  mood,  thou  gaz- 
est  upon  me,  and  givest  me  at  parting  this 
fairest  autumn  night  of  thine;  I  will  ascend 
yonder  rock  and  take  a  long  farewell." 

The  action  of  "Sigurd  Slembe"  is  inter- 
spersed with  several  lyrics,  the  most  strik- 
ing of  which  is  here  translated  in  exact 
reproduction  of  the  original  form : 

"Sin  and  Death,  at  break  of  day. 
Day,  day. 

Spoke  together  with  bated  breath; 
'  Marry  thee,  sister,  that  I  may  stay, 
Stay,   stay. 
In  thy  house,'  quoth  Death. 

"Death  laughed  aloud  when  Sin  was  wed, 
Wed,  wed, 

And  danced  on  the  bridal  day: 
But  bore  that  night  from  the  bridal  bed. 
Bed,  bed, 
The  groom  in  a  shroud  away. 

"Death   came   to   her   sister  at   break  of   day, 
Day,  day, 
And  Sin  drew  a  weary  breath; 

39 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

'  He  whom  thou  lovest  is  mine  for  aye, 

Aye,  aye, 

Mine  he  is,'  quoth  Death."  ^^ 

One  more  saga  drama  was  to  be  writ- 
ten by  Bjornson,  but  "Sigurd  Slembe" 
remains  his  greatest  achievement  in  this 
field  of  activity.  Its  single  successor, 
"Sigurd  Jorsalfar,"  was  not  published  un- 
til ten  years  later,  and  may  not  be  com- 
pared with  it  for  either  strength  or  poetic 
inspiration.  The  author  called  it  a  "  folk- 
play,"  and  announced  the  intention,  which 
was  never  fulfilled,  of  making  several  sim- 
ilar experiments  with  scenes  from  the 
sagas,  "which  should  appeal  to  every  eye 
and  every  stage  of  culture,  to  each  in  its 
own  way,  and  at  the  performance  of 
which  all,  for  the  time  being,  would  ex- 
perience the  joy  of  fellow  feeling."  The 
experiment  proves  interesting,  and  is  car- 
ried out  without  didacticism  or  straining 
after  sensational  effects ;  the  play  is  vigor- 
ous and  well  planned,  but  for  the  reader  it 
40 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

has  little  of  the  dramatic  impressiveness 
of  its  predecessor,  although  as  an  acting 
drama  it  is  better  fitted  for  the  require- 
ments of  the  stage. 

The  two  volumes  which  contain  the 
greater  part  of  Bjornson's  poetry  not 
dramatic  in  form  were  both  published  in 
1870.  One  of  them  was  the  collection  of 
his  "Poems  and  Songs,"  the  other  was  the 
epic  cycle,  "Arnljot  Gelline,"  the  only  long 
poem  that  he  has  written.  The  volume 
of  lyrics  includes  many  pieces  of  imperfect 
quality  and  slight  value, — personal  tributes 
and  occasional  productions, — but  it  in- 
cludes also  those  national  songs  that  every 
Norwegian  knows  by  heart,  that  are  sung 
upon  all  national  occasions  by  the  author's 
friends  and  foes  alike,  and  that  have  made 
him  the  greatest  of  Norway's  lyric  poets. 
No  translation  can  ever  quite  reproduce 
their  cadence  or  their  feeling;  they  illus- 
trate the  one  aspect  of  Bjornson's  many- 
41 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

sided  genius  that  must  be  taken  on  trust 
by  those  who  cannot  read  his  language. 
A  friend  once  asked  him  upon  what  oc- 
casion he  had  felt  most  fully  the  joy  of 
being  a  poet.    His  reply  was  as  follows : — 

"It  was  when  a  party  from  the  Right  in 
Christiania  came  to  my  house  and  smashed  all 
my  windows.  For  when  they  had  finished 
their  assault,  and  were  starting  home  again, 
they  felt  that  they  had  to  sing  something,  and 
so  they  began  to  sing,  'Yes,  we  love  this  land 
of  ours ' — they  could  n't  help  it.  They  had  to 
sing  the  song  of  the  man  they  had  attacked." 

Into  this  collection  were  gathered  the 
lyrics  scattered  through  the  peasant  tales 
and  the  saga  dramas,  thus  making  it  com- 
pletely representative  of  his  quality  as  a 
singer.  A  revised  and  somewhat  extend- 
ed edition  of  this  volume  was  published 
about  ten  years  later.  Bjornson  has  had 
the  rare  fortune  of  having  his  lyrics  set  to 
music  by  three  composers — Nordraak, 
Kjerulf,  and  Grieg — as  intensely  national 
in  spirit  as  himself,  and  no  festal  occasion 
42 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

among  Norwegians  is  celebrated  without 
singing  the  national  hymn,  "Yes,  We 
Love  This  Land  of  Ours,"  or  the  noble 
choral  setting  of  "Olaf  Trygvason."  The 
best  folk-singer  is  he  who  stands  in  the 
whirling  round  of  life,  says  the  poet,  and 
he  reveals  the  very  secret  of  his  power 
when  he  tells  us  that  life  was  ever  more  to 
him  than  song,  and  that  existence,  where 
it  was  worth  while,  in  the  thick  of  the 
human  fray,  always  had  for  him  a  deeper 
meaning  than  anything  he  had  written. 
The  longest  poem  in  Bjornson's  collection 
is  called  "Bergliot,"  and  is  a  dramatic 
monologue  in  which  the  foul  slaying  of 
her  husband  Ejnar  Tambarskelve  and 
their  son  Ejndride  is  mourned  by  the  be- 
reaved wife  and  mother.  The  story  is 
from  the  saga  of  Harald  Haardraada,  and 
is  treated  with  the  deepest  tragic  impres- 
siveness. 


43 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

"Odin  in  Valhal  I  dare  not  seek 
For  him  I  forsook  in  my  childhood. 
And  the  new  God  in  Gimle? 
He  took  all  that  I  had! 

Revenge: — Who  says  revenge? — 
Can  revenge  awaken  my  dead 
Or  shelter  me  from  the  cold? 
Has  it  comfort  for  a  widow's  home 
Or  for  a  childless  mother? 

Away  with  your  revenge:     Let  be! 
Lay  him  on  the  litter,  him  and  the  son. 
Come,  we  will  follow  them  home. 
The  new  God  in  Gimle,  the  terrible,  who  took 

all. 
Let  him  also  take  revenge,  for  he  understands 

it! 
Drive  slowly:    Thus  drove  Ejnar  ever; 

— Soon  enough  shall  we  reach  home." 

It  was  also  to  the  "Heimskringla"  that 
Bjornson  turned  for  the  subject  of  his 
epic  cycle,  "Arnljot  Gelline."  Here  we 
read  in  various  rhythms  of  Arnljot  the 
outlaw,  how  the  hands  of  all  men  are 
against  him;  how  he  offers  to  stay  his 
wrath  and  end  the  blood  feud  if  the  fair 
Ingigerd,  Trand's  daughter,  may  be  be- 
stowed upon  him;  how,  being  refused,  he 
sets  fire  to  Trand's  house  and  bears 
44 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

Ingigerd  away  captive;  how  her  tears  pre- 
vail upon  him  to  release  her,  and  how  she 
seeks  refuge  in  a  southern  cloister;  how 
Arnljot  wanders  restless  over  sea  and  land 
until  he  comes  to  King  Olaf,  on  the  eve 
of  the  great  battle,  receives  the  Christian 
faith,  fights  fiercely  in  the  vanguard 
against  the  hosts  of  the  heathen,  and, 
smiling,  falls  with  his  king  on  the  field  of 
Stiklestad.  One  song  from  this  cycle, 
"The  Cloister  in  the  South"  is  here  repro- 
duced in  an  exact  copy  of  the  original 
metre,  in  the  hope  that  even  this  imperfect 
representation  of  the  poem  may  be  better 
than  none  at  all. 

"Who  would  enter  so  late  the  cloister  in?" 
"A  maid  forlorn  from  the  land  of  snow." 
"What   sorrow  is   thine,  and   what  thy  sin?" 
"  The  deepest  sorrow  the  heart  can  know. 
I  have  nothing  done 

Yet  must  still  endeavor, 
Though  my  strength  be  none, 
To  wander  ever. 
Let  me  in,  to  seek  for  my  pain  surcease, 
I  can  find  no  peace." 

45 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

"From    what    far-oflf    land    hast    thou    taken 
flight?" 
"From  the  land  of  the  North,  a  weary  way.'' 
"What  stayed  thy  feet  at  our  gate  this  night?" 
"The   chant  of  the  nuns,  for  I   heard  them 
pray. 
And  the  song  gave  peace 

To  my  soul,  and  blessed  me; 
It  offered  release 

From  the  grief  that  oppressed  me. 
Let  me  in,  so  if  peace  to  give  be  thine, 
I  may  make  it  mine." 

"Name  me  the  grief  that  thy  life  hath  crossed." 

"Rest  may  I  never,  never  know." 
"Thy  father,  thy  lover,  thou  hast  then  lost?" 
"I  lost  them  both  at  a  single  blow. 
And  all  I  held  dear 

In  my  deepest  affection; 
Aye,  all  that  was  near 

To  my  heart's  recollection. 
Let  me  in,  I  am  failing,  I  beg,  I  implore, 
I  can  bear  no  more." 

"How  was  it  that  thou  thy  father  lost?" 

"He  was  slain,  and  I  saw  the  deed." 
"How  was  it  that  thou  thy  lover  lost?" 
"My  father  he  slew,  and  I  saw  the  deed. 
I  wept  so  bitterly 

When  he  roughly  would  woo  me, 
He  at  last  set  me  free, 

And  forbore  to  pursue  me. 
Let  me  in,  for  the  horror  my  soul  doth  fill. 
That  I  love  him  still." 

46 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

Chorus  of  nuns  within  the  Church. 
"  Come  child,  come  bride, 
To  God's  own  side, 
From  grief  find  rest 
On  Jesus'  breast. 
Rest  thy  burden  of  sorrow. 

On   Horeb's   height; 
Like  the  lark,  with  to-morrow 

Shall  thy  soul  take  flight. 

Here  stilled  is  all  yearning, 
No  passion  returning; 
No  terror  come  near  thee 
When  the  Saviour  can  hear  thee. 
For  He,  if  in  need  be 

Thy  storm-beaten  soul. 
Though  it  bruised  as  a  reed  be, 

Shall  raise  it  up  whole." 

Despite  the  power  and  beauty  of  an  oc- 
casional manifestation  of  his  genius  dur- 
ing the  late  sixties  and  early  seventies,  the 
poetic  impulse  that  had  made  Bjornson 
the  most  famous  of  Norwegian  authors 
seemed,  toward  the  close  of  the  fifteen- 
year  period  just  now  under  review,  to  be 
well  nigh  exhausted.  Even  among  those 
who  had  followed  his  career  most  closely 
there  were  few  who  could  anticipate  the 
47 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

splendid  new  outburst  of  activity  for 
which  he  was  preparing.  These  years 
seemed  to  be  a  dead  time,  not  only  in 
Bjornson's  life,  but  also  in  the  general  in- 
tellectual life  of  the  Scandinavian  coun- 
tries. Dr.  Brandes  thus  describes  the  feel- 
ings of  a  thoughtful  observer  during  that 
period  of  stagnation.  "In  the  North  one 
had  the  feeling  of  being  shut  off  from  the 
intellectual  life  of  the  time.  We  were 
sitting  with  closed  doors,  a  few  brains 
struggling  fruitlessly  with  the  problem  of 
how  to  get  them  opened.  .  .  With  whole 
schools  of  foreign  literature  the  cultivated 
Dane  had  almost  no  acquaintance;  and 
when,  finally,  as  a  consequence  of  political 
animosity,  intellectual  intercourse  with 
Germany  was  broken  off,  the  main  chan- 
nel was  closed  through  which  the  intel- 
lectual developments  of  the  day  had  been 
communicated  to  Norway  as  well  as  Den- 
mark. French  influence  was  dreaded  as 
48 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

immoral,  and  there  was  but  little  under- 
standing of  either  the  English  language  or 
spirit."  But  an  intellectual  renaissance 
was  at  hand,  an  intellectual  reawakening 
with  a  cosmopolitan  outlook,  and  Bjorn- 
son  was  destined  to  become  its  leader, 
much  as  he  had  been  the  leader  of  the  na- 
tional movement  of  an  earlier  decade. 
During  these  years  of  seeming  inactivity, 
comparatively  speaking,  he  had  read  and 
thought  much,  and  the  new  thought  of  the 
age  had  fecundated  his  mind.  Historical 
and  religious  criticism,  educational  and 
social  problems,  had  taken  possession  of 
his  thought,  and  the  philosophy  of  evolu- 
tion had  transformed  the  whole  tenor  of 
his  ideas,  shaping  them  to  deeper  issues 
and  more  practical  purposes  than  had  hith- 
erto engaged  them.  He  had  read  widely 
and  variously  in  Darwin,  Spencer,  Mill, 
Miiller,  and  Taine;  he  had,  in  short, 
scaled  the  "lofty  mountains"  that  had  so 

49 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

hemmed  in  his  early  view,  and  made  his 
way  into  the  intellectual  kingdoms  of  the 
modern  world  that  lay  beyond.  The 
Weltgeist  had  appealed  to  him  with  its 
irresistible  behest,  just  as  it  appealed  at 
about  the  same  time  to  Ibsen  and  Tolstoy 
and  Ruskin,  and  had  made  him  a  man  of 
new  interests  and  ideals. 

One  might  have  found  foreshadowings 
of  this  transformation  in  certain  of  his 
earlier  works, — in  "The  Newly  Married 
Couple,"  for  example,  with  its  delicate 
analysis  of  a  common  domestic  relation, 
or  in  "The  Fisher  Maiden,"  with  its  touch 
of  modernity, — but  from  these  sugges- 
tions one  could  hardly  have  prophesied  the 
enthusiasm  and  the  genial  force  with 
which  Bjornson  was  to  project  his  person- 
ality into  the  controversial  arena  of  mod- 
ern life.  The  series  of  works  which  have 
come  from  his  pen  during  the  past  thirty- 
five  years  have  dealt  with  most  of  the 
50 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

graver  problems  which  concern  society  as 
a  whole, — politics,  religion,  education,  the 
status  of  women,  the  license  of  the  press, 
the  demand  of  the  socialist  for  a  recon- 
struction of  the  old  order.  They  have 
also  dealt  with  many  of  the  delicate  ques- 
tions of  individual  ethics, — the  relations 
of  husband  and  wife,  of  parent  and  child, 
the  responsibility  of  the  merchant  to  his 
creditors  and  of  the  employer  to  his  de- 
pendants, the  double  standard  of  morality 
for  men  and  women,  and  the  duty  devolv- 
ing upon  both  to  transmit  a  vigorous 
strain  to  their  offspring.  These  are  some 
of  the  themes  that  have  engaged  the  nov- 
elist and  dramatist;  they  have  also  en- 
gaged the  public  speaker  and  lay  preacher 
of  enlightenment,  as  well  as  themes  of  a 
more  strictly  political  character,  such  as 
the  separation  of  Norway  from  the  Dual 
Monarchy,  the  renewal  of  the  ancient  bond 
between  Norway  and  Iceland,  the  free  de- 

51 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

velopment  of  parliamentary  government, 
the  cause  of  Pangermanism,  and  the  fur- 
therance of  peace  between  the  nations.  An 
extensive  programme,  surely,  even  in  this 
summary  enumeration  of  its  more  salient 
features,  but  one  to  which  his  capacity 
has  not  proved  unequal,  and  which  he  has 
carried  out  by  the  force  of  his  immense 
energy  and  superabundant  vitality.  The 
burden  of  all  this  tendencious  matter  has 
caused  his  art  to  suffer  at  times,  no  doubt, 
but  his  inspiration  has  retained  through- 
out much  of  the  marvellous  freshness  of 
the  earlier  years,  and  the  genius  of  the 
poet  still  flashes  upon  us  from  a  prosaic 
environment,  sometimes  in  a  lovely  lyric, 
more  frequently,  however,  in  the  turn  of 
a  phrase  or  the  psychological  envisage- 
ment  of  some  supreme  moment  in  the  ac- 
tion of  the  story  or  the  drama. 

The  great  transformation  in  Bjomson's 
literary  manner  and  choice  of  subjects  was 
52 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

marked  by  his  sending  home  from  abroad, 
in  the  season  of  1874-75,  two  plays,  "The 
Editor"  and  "A  Bankruptcy."  It  was 
two  years  later  that  Ibsen  sent  home  from 
abroad  "The  Pillars  of  Society,"  which 
marked  a  similar  turning  point  in  his  ar- 
tistic career.  It  is  a  curious  coincidence 
that  the  plays  of  modern  life  produced 
during  this  second  period  by  these  two 
men  are  the  same  in  number,  an  even 
dozen  in  each  case.  Besides  the  two 
above  named,  these  modern  plays  of 
Bjornson  are,  with  their  dates,  the  fol- 
lowing: "The  King"  (1877),  "Leo- 
narda"  (1879),  "The  New  System" 
(1879),  "A  Glove"  (1883),  "Beyond 
the  Strength  I."  (1883),  "Geography  and 
Love"  (1885),  "Beyond  the  Strength 
11."  (1895),  "Paul  Lange  and  Tora 
Parsberg"  ( 1898) , " Laboremus "  ( 1901 ) , 
and  "At  Storhove"  (1902).  Since  the 
cessation  of  Ibsen's  activity,  Bjornson  has 
53 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

outrun  him  in  the  race,  adding  "  Daglan- 
net  "  (1904),  and  "  When  the  New  Wine 
Blooms"  (1909)  to  the  Hst  above  given. 
Besides  these  fourteen  plays,  however,  he 
has  published  seven  important  volumes  of 
prose  fiction  during  the  last  thirty-five 
years.  The  titles  and  dates  are  as  follows : 
"Magnhild"  (1877),  "Captain  Man- 
sana"  (1879),  "Dust"  (1882),  "Flags 
Are  Flying  in  City  and  Harbor"  (1884), 
"In  God's  Ways,"  (1889),  "New  Tales" 
(1894),  (of  which  collection  "  Absalom's 
Hair  "  is  the  longest  and  most  important), 
and  "Mary"  (1906).  The  achievement 
represented  by  this  list  is  all  the  more  ex- 
traordinary when  we  consider  the  fact  that 
for  the  greater  part  of  the  thirty-five  years 
which  these  plays  and  novels  cover,  their 
author  has  been,  both  as  a  public  speaker 
and  as  a  writer  for  the  periodical  press,  an 
active  participant  in  the  political  and  social 
life  of  his  country. 

54 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJGRNSON 

Most  of  these  books  must  be  dismissed 
with  a  few  words  in  order  that  our  re- 
maining space  may  be  given  to  the  four  or 
five  that  are  of  the  greatest  power  and  sig- 
nificance. "The  Editor,"  the  first  of  the 
modern  plays,  offers  a  fierce  satire  upon 
modern  journalism,  its  dishonesty,  its  cor- 
rupt and  malicious  power,  its  personal  and 
partisan  prejudice.  The  character  of  the 
editor  in  this  play  was  unmistakeably 
drawn,  in  its  leading  characteristics,  from 
the  figure  of  a  well  known  conservative 
journalist  in  Christiania,  although  Bjorn- 
son  vigorously  maintained  that  the  pro- 
traiture  was  typical  rather  than  personal. 

"In  various  other  countries  than  my  own,  I 
have  observed  the  type  of  journalist  who  is 
here  depicted.  It  is  characterized  by  acting 
upon  a  basis  of  sheer  egotism,  passionate  and 
boundless,  and  by  terrorism  in  such  fashion 
that  it  frightens  honest  people  away  from 
every  liberal  movement,  and  visits  upon  the  in- 
dividual an  unscrupulous  persecution." 


55 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

This  play  was  not  particularly  successful 
upon  the  stage,  but  the  book  was  widely 
read,  and  occasioned  much  excited  person- 
al controversy.  "A  Bankruptcy,"  on  the 
other  hand,  proved  a  brilliant  stage  suc- 
cess. Its  matter  was  less  contentious,  and 
its  technical  execution  was  effective  and 
brilliant.  It  was  not  in  vain  that  Bjornson 
had  at  different  times  been  the  director  of 
three  theatres.  This  play  has  for  its  theme 
the  ethics  of  business  life,  and  more  es- 
pecially the  question  of  the  extent  to  which 
a  man  whose  finances  are  embarrassed  is 
justified  in  continued  speculation  for  the 
ultimate  protection  of  himself  and  his 
creditors.  Despite  its  treatment  of  this 
serious  problem,  the  play  is  lighter  and 
more  genial  in  vein  than  the  author's  plays 
are  wont  to  be,  and  the  element  of  humor 
is  unusually  conspicuous.  Jaeger  remarks 
that  "A  Bankruptcy"  did  two  new  things 
for  Norwegian  dramatic  literature.  It 
56 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

made  money  affairs  a  legitimate  subject 
for  literary  treatment,  and  it  raised  the 
curtain  upon  the  Norwegian  home.  "It 
was  with  *A  Bankruptcy'  that  the  home 
made  its  first  appearance  upon  the  stage, 
the  home  with  its  joys  and  sorrows,  with 
its  conflicts  and  its  tenderness." 

Two  years  later  appeared  "The  King," 
which  is  in  many  respects  Bjornson's 
greatest  modern  masterpiece  in  dramatic 
form.  He  had  by  this  time  become  a  con- 
vinced republican,  but  he  was  also  an  evo- 
lutionist, and  he  knew  that  republics  are 
not  created  by  fiat.  He  believed  the  ten- 
dency toward  republicanism  to  be  irresis- 
tible, but  he  believed  also  that  there  must 
be  intermediate  stages  in  the  transition 
from  monarchy.  Absolutism  is  succeeded 
by  constitutionalism,  and  that  by  parlia- 
mentarism, and  that  in  the  end  must  be 
succeeded  by  a  republicanism  that  will  free 
itself  from  all  the  traditional  forms  of 
57 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

symbol  and  ceremonial.  He  had  also  a 
special  belief  that  the  smaller  peoples  were 
better  fitted  for  development  in  this  direc- 
tion than  the  larger  and  more  complex 
societies,  although,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
thought  that  the  process  of  growth  into 
full  self-government  was  likely  to  be  slow- 
er among  the  Germanic  than  among  the 
Latin  races.  In  the  deeply  moving  play 
now  to  be  considered,  we  have,  in  the 
character  of  the  titular  king,  an  extraordi- 
nary piece  of  psychological  analysis.  The 
king  is  young,  physically  delicate,  and  of 
highly  sensitive  organization.  When  he 
comes  to  the  throne  he  realizes  the  hollow- 
ness  and  the  hypocrisy  of  the  existence  that 
prescription  has  marked  out  for  him;  he 
realizes  also  that  the  very  ideal  of  mon- 
archy, under  the  conditions  of  modern 
European  civilization,  is  a  gigantic  false- 
hood. For  a  time  after  his  accession,  he 
leads  a  life  of  pleasure  seeking  and  revelry, 
58 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

hopingf  that  he  may  dull  his  sense  of  the 
sharp  contrast  that  exists  between  his  sta- 
tion and  his  ideals.  But  his  conscience 
will  give  him  no  peace,  and  he  turns  to 
deliberate  contemplation  of  the  thought, 
not  indeed  of  abdicating  his  false  position, 
but  of  transforming  it  into  something 
more  consonant  with  truth  and  the  de- 
mands of  the  age.  He  will  become  a  citi- 
zen king,  and  take  for  wife  a  daughter  of 
the  people;  he  will  do  away  with  the  pomp 
and  circumstance  of  his  court,  and  attempt 
to  lead  a  simple  and  natural  life,  in  which 
the  interests  of  the  people  shall  be  para- 
mount in  his  attention.  But  in  this  at- 
tempt he  is  thwarted  at  every  step.  All 
the  forces  of  selfishness  and  prejudice  and 
ignorance  combine  against  him;  even  the 
people  whom  he  seeks  to  benefit  are  so 
wedded  to  their  idols  that  their  attitude 
is  one  of  suspicion  rather  than  of  sympa- 
thy. He  loves  a  young  woman  of  strong 
59 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

and  noble  character,  and  wins  her  love  in 
return,  but  she  dies  on  the  very  eve  of 
their  union.  His  oldest  and  most  confi- 
dential friend,  the  wealthiest  man  in  the 
kingdom,  but  a  republican,  is  murdered  by 
a  radical  associate  of  the  intransigeant 
type,  and  the  king  is  left  utterly  bereaved 
by  his  twofold  loss.  This  brings  us  to  the 
closing  scene  of  the  drama,  in  which  the 
king,  his  nerves  strained  to  the  breaking 
point,  confronts  the  group  of  officials  and 
others  who  bring  to  him  the  empty  phrases 
of  a  conventional  condolence: — 

The  King.  Hush!  Have  a  little  respect  for 
the  truth  that  should  follow  death!  Under- 
stand me  rightly:  I  do  not  mean  that  any  of 
you  would  lie.  But  the  very  air  about  a  king 
is  infected.  It  was  of  that  —  a  word  or  two. 
My  time  is  short.     But  a  testament. . . . 

The  Priest.    Testament. 

The  King.  Neither  the  Old  nor  the  New  I 
Greet  what  is  called  Christianity  here  in  this 
land — greet  it  from  me!  I  have  thought  much 
about  Christian  folk  of  late. 

The  Priest.    That  rejoices  me. 

The  King.     How  your  tone  cuts  me!     Greet 

60 


BJ5RNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

it  from  me,  what  is  called  Christianity  here  in 
this  land.  Nay,  do  not  crane  your  necks  and 
bend  your  backs  as  if  the  wisdom  of  the  ages 
were  now  forthcoming,  (aside)  Can  there  be 
any  use  in  saying  something  seriously?  (aloud) 
You  are  Christians? 

The  General.  God  forbid  the  doubt!  Faith 
is  exceedingly  useful. . . . 

The  King.  For  discipline,  (to  the  Sheriff) 
And  you? 

The  Sheriff.  From  my  blessed  ancestors  I 
received  the  faith. 

The  King.  So  they  are  blessed  also.  Why 
not? 

The  Sheriff.  They  brought  me  strictly  up 
to  fear  God,  to  honor  the  king. 

The  King.  And  love  your  fellowmen.  You 
are  a  State  individual,  sheriff.  And  such  are 
Christians  nowadays,  (to  the  Merchant)  And 
you? 

The  Merchant.  I  have  not  been  able  to  go 
to  church  very  much  of  late  because  of  my 
cough.    And  in  the  foul  air. . . . 

The  King.  You  go  to  sleep.  But  are  you  a 
Christian? 

The  Merchant.    That  goes  without  saying. 

The  King,  (to  the  Priest.)  And  you  are  nat- 
urally one? 

The  Priest.  By  the  grace  of  Jesus  I  hope 
that  I  am. 

The  King.  That  is  the  formula,  boys,  that 
is  the  accepted  thing  to  say.  Therefore,  you 
are  a  Christian  community,  and  it  is  no  fault 

6i 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

of  mine  if  such  a  community  will  not  deal  seri- 
ously with  what  concerns  Christianity.  Greet 
it  from  me,  and  say  that  it  must  have  an  eye 
to  the  institution  of  monarchy. 

The  Priest.  Christianity  has  nothing  to  do 
with  such  matters.     It  searches  the  inner  man. 

The  King.  That  tone!  I  know  it — it  does 
not  search  the  air  in  which  the  patient  lives, 
but  the  lungs.  There  you  have  it!  Neverthe- 
less, Christianity  must  have  an  eye  to  the  mon- 
archy—  must  pluck  the  lie  from  it  —  must  not 
follow  it  to  its  coronation  in  the  church,  as  an 
ape  follows  a  peacock.  I  know  what  I  felt  in 
that  situation.  I  had  gone  through  with  a  re- 
hearsal the  day  before — ho,  ho!  Ask  the 
Christianity  in  this  land,  if  it  be  not  time  to 
concern  itself  with  the  monarchy.  It  should 
hardly  any  longer,  it  seems  to  me,  let  the  mon- 
archy play  the  part  of  the  seductive  wanton 
—  who  turns  the  thoughts  of  all  citizens  to 
war — which  is  much  against  the  message  of 
Christianity — and  to  class  distinctions,  to  lux- 
ury, to  show  and  vanity.  The  monarchy  is 
now  so  great  a  lie  that  it  compels  the  most  up- 
right man  to  share  in  its  falsehood." 

The  conversation  that  follows  is  in  a  vein 
of  bitterness  on  the  one  side,  and  of  obtuse 
smugness  on  the  other;  the  tragic  irony 
of  the  action  grows  deeper  and  deeper,  un- 
til in  the  end  the  king,  completely  disheart- 
62 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

ened  and  despairing,  goes  into  an  adjoin- 
ing room,  and  dies  by  his  own  hand,  to 
the  consternation  of  the  men  from  whom 
he  has  just  parted.  They  give  utterance 
to  a  few  poHte  phrases,  charitably  account- 
ing for  the  deed  by  the  easy  attribution  of 
insanity  to  the  king,  and  the  curtain  falls. 
It  may  well  be  imagined  that  "The 
King"  made  a  stir  in  literary  and  social 
circles,  and  quite  noticeably  fluttered  the 
dovecotes  of  conventionality  and  conserva- 
tism. Such  plain  speaking  and  such  dead- 
ly earnestness  of  conviction  were  indeed 
far  removed  from  the  idyllic  simplicity  of 
the  peasant  tales  and  from  the  poetical  re- 
constructions of  the  legendary  past.  Eight 
years  later,  Bjornson  prefaced  a  new  edi- 
tion of  this  work  with  a  series  of  reflec- 
tions upon  "Intellectual  Freedom"  that 
constitute  one  of  the  most  vigorous  and 
remarkable  examples  of  his  serious  prose. 
The  central  ideas  of  his  political  faith  are 

63 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

embodied  in  the  following  sentences  from 
this  preface: — 

"Intellectual  Freedom.  Why  is  not  atten- 
tion called  over  and  over  again  to  the  fact  that 
for  the  great  peoples,  who  have  so  many  com- 
pensating interests,  the  free  commerce  of  ideas 
is  one  condition  of  life  among  many  others; 
while  for  us,  the  small  peoples,  it  is  absolutely 
indispensable.  A  people  numerically  large  may 
attain  to  ways  of  thought  and  enterprise  that 
no  political  censure  can  reduce  to  a  minimum; 
but  under  narrower  conditions  it  may  easily 
come  about  that  the  whole  people  will  fall 
asleep.  A  powerful  propaganda  of  enlighten- 
ment under  the  conditions  of  free  speech  is  for 
us  of  the  first  and  the  last  importance.  When 
I  wrote  this  piece  it  was  my  chief  aim  to  en- 
large the  bounds  of  free  thought.  I  have  later 
made  the  same  attempt  in  matters  of  religion 
and  morals.  When  my  opponents  seek  to  sum 
up  my  character  in  a  few  words,  they  are  apt 
to  say:  'He  attacks  the  throne  and  the  altar.' 
It  seems  to  me  that  I  have  served  the  freedom 
of  the  spirit,  and  in  the  interests  of  that  cause 
I  now  beg  leave  to  reply,  (i)  Concerning  the 
attack  on  Christianity.  It  may  be  worth  while 
in  a  country  with  a  state  church  to  recall  now 
and  then  the  meaning  of  Christianity.  It  is 
not  an  institution,  still  less  a  book,  and  least 
of  all  it  is  a  house  or  a  seminary.  It  is  the 
godly  life  according  to  the  precepts  and  ex- 

64 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

ample  of  Jesus.  There  may  be  men  who  think 
they  are  attacking  Christianity  when  they  in- 
vestigate the  historical  origin  or  the  morality 
of  some  dogma;  I  do  not  think  so.  Honest 
investigation  can  result  only  in  growth.  Chris- 
tianity, with  or  without  its  whole  apparatus  of 
dogma,  will  endure  in  its  essence  for  thousands 
of  years  after  us;  there  will  always  be  spiritu- 
ally-minded people  who  will  be  ennobled  by 
it,  and  some  made  great.  I  honor  all  the  noble. 
I  have  friends  among  the  Christians,  whom  I 
love,  and  never  for  a  moment  have  I  thought 
of  attacking  their  Christianity.  I  have  no 
higher  wish  than  to  see  them  by  its  help  trans- 
form certain  aspects  of  our  society  into  seri- 
ousness. (2)  Concerning  the  attack  on  mon- 
archy. Monarchy  is,  on  the  other  hand,  an 
institution,  here  the  circumstances  are  natur- 
ally different.  I  have  attacked  monarchy,  and 
I  will  attack  it.  But  —  and  to  this  'but'  I  call 
the  closest  attention.  Shortly  before  the  July 
Revolution,  when  its  first  signs  were  declared, 
Chateaubriand  was  talking  with  the  King,  who 
asked  what  it  all  meant.  '  It  is  monarchy  that 
is  done  with,'  replied  the  royalist,  for  he  was 
also  a  seer.  Certainly  there  have  been  in 
France  both  kingdom  and  empire  since  that 
day.  If  there  should  be  no  more  hereafter, 
they  still  exist  in  other  lands,  and  will  endure 
for  generations  after  us.  But  'done  with'  are 
they  none  the  less;  notice  was  given  them  by 
the  French  Revolution.  It  does  not  concern 
them  all  simultaneously;  it  fixes  terms,  differ- 

65 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

ent  for  the  different  kingdoms,  and  far  re- 
moved for  the  kingdoms  based  upon  conquest. 
But  the  face  of  civilization  is  now  turned  to- 
ward the  republic,  and  every  people  has 
reached  the  first,  second,  or  third  stage  of  the 
way. 

"If  a  work  of  the  mind  is  born  of  Norse  con- 
ditions and  stands  before  the  ethical  judgment 
seat — let  it  have  its  full  action;  otherwise  it 
will  not  produce  its  full  reaction.  If  the  faith 
that  gave  shape  to  the  piece  is  not  the  strong- 
est force  in  the  society  that  gave  it  birth,  it 
will  evoke  an  opposing  force  of  greater 
strength.  Thereby  all  will  gain.  But  to  ig- 
nore it,  or  seek  to  crush  it — that  in  a  large 
society  may  not  greatly  matter,  so  rich  are  the 
possibilities  of  other  work  taking  its  place; 
but  in  a  small  society  it  may  be  equivalent  to 
destroying  the  sight  of  its  only  eye." 

In  the  clean-cut  phrases  and  nioral  earn- 
estness of  this  apologia  pro  vita  sua,  which 
deserves  to  be  reproduced  at  greater 
length,  we  have  the  modern  Bjornson,  no 
longer  poet  alone,  but  poet  and  prophet  at 
once,  the  champion  of  sincere  thinking 
and  worthy  living,  the  Sigurd  Slembe  of 
our  own  day,  happier  than  his  prototype 
in  the  consciousness  that  the  ambition  to 
66 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

serve  his  people  has  not  been  altogether 
thwarted,  and  that  his  beneficent  activity 
is  not  made  sterile  even  by  the  bitterest  op- 
position. 

Only  a  rapid  glance  may  be  taken  at  the 
books  of  the  five  years  following  upon  the 
publication  of  "The  King."  The  story  of 
"Magnhild,"  planned  several  years  earlier, 
represents  Bjomson's  return  to  fiction 
after  a  long  dramatic  interlude.  There 
are  still  peasants  in  this  story,  but  they  are 
different  from  the  figures  of  the  early 
tales,  and  the  atmosphere  of  the  work  is 
modern.  It  turns  upon  the  question  of  the 
mutual  duties  of  husband  and  wife,  when 
love  no  longer  unites  them.  The  solution 
seems  to  lie  in  separation  when  union  has 
thus  become  essentially  immoral.  "Cap- 
tain Mansana"  is  a  story  of  Italian  life, 
based,  so  the  author  assures  us,  on  actual 
characters  and  happenings  that  had  come 
within  the  range  of  his  observation  during 
67 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

his  stay  abroad.  Its  interest  does  not  lie 
in  any  particular  problem,  but  rather  in 
the  delineation  of  the  titular  figure,  a 
strong  and  impetuous  person  whose  char- 
acter suggests  that  of  Ferdinand  Lassalle, 
as  the  author  himself  points  out  to  us  in  a 
prefatory  note.  "Dust"  is  a  pathetic  lit- 
tle story  having  for  its  central  idea  what 
seems  like  a  pale  reflection  of  the  idea  of 
Ibsen's  "Ghosts,"  which  had  appeared  a 
few  months  before.  It  is  the  dust  of  the 
past  that  settles  upon  our  souls,  and  clogs 
their  free  action.  The  special  application 
of  this  thought  is  to  the  religious  training 
of  children : — 

"When  you  teach  children  that  the  life  here 
below  is  nothing  to  the  life  above,  that  to  be 
visible  is  nothing  in  comparison  with  being  in- 
visible, that  to  be  a  human  being  is  nothing 
in  comparison  with  being  dead,  that  is  not  the 
way  to  teach  them  to  view  life  properly,  or  to 
love  life,  to  gain  courage,  strength  for  work, 
and  love  of  country." 


68 


BJ5RNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

In  the  play,  "Leonarda,"  and  again  in  the 
play,  "A  Glove,"  the  author  recurs  to  the 
woman  question;  in  the  one  case,  his 
theme  is  the  attitude  of  society  toward  the 
woman  of  blemished  reputation;  in  the 
other,  its  attitude  toward  the  man  who  in 
his  relation  with  women  has  violated  the 
moral  law.  "Leonarda"  is  a  somewhat 
inconclusive  work,  because  the  issue  is  not 
clearly  defined,  but  in  "A  Glove"  (at  least 
in  the  acting  version  of  the  play,  which 
differs  from  the  book  in  its  ending)  there 
is  no  lack  of  definiteness.  This  play  in- 
exorably demands  the  enforcement  of  the 
same  standard  of  morality  for  both  sexes, 
and  declares  the  unchaste  man  to  be  as  un- 
fit for  honorable  marriage  as  the  unchaste 
woman.  Upon  the  theme  thus  presented 
a  long  and  violent  discussion  raged;  but 
if  there  be  such  a  thing  as  an  immutable 
moral  law  in  this  matter,  it  must  be  that 
upon  which  Bjornson  has  so  squarely  and 
69 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

uncompromisingly  planted  his  feet.  The 
other  remaining  work  of  this  five-year 
period  is  the  play  called  "The  New  Sys- 
tem." The  new  system  in  question  is  a 
system  of  railway  management,  and  it  is 
a  wasteful  one.  But  the  young  engineer 
who  demonstrates  this  fact  has  a  hard 
time  in  opening  the  eyes  of  the  public.  He 
succeeds  eventually,  but  not  until  he  has 
encountered  every  sort  of  contemptible  op- 
position and  hypocritical  evasion  of  the 
plain  truth.  The  social  satire  of  the  piece 
is  subtle  and  sharp ;  what  the  author  really 
aims  at  is  to  illustrate,  by  a  specific  ex- 
ample, the  repressive  forces  that  dominate 
the  life  of  a  small  people,  and  make  it  al- 
most impossible  for  any  sort  of  truth  to 
triumph  over  prejudice. 

Since   the   production   of   "A    Glove," 

twenty  years  ago,  eight  more  plays  have 

come  from  Bjornson's  prolific  pen.     Of 

these  by  far  the  most  important  are  the 

70 


BJ5RNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

two  that  are  linked  by  the  common  title, 
"Beyond  the  Strength."  The  translation 
of  this  title  is  hopelessly  inadequate,  be- 
cause the  original  word  means  much  more 
than  strength;  it  means  talent,  faculty, 
capability,  the  sum  total  of  a  man's  endow- 
ment for  some  particular  purpose.  The 
two  pieces  bearing  this  name  are  quite  dif- 
ferent in  theme,  but  certain  characters  ap- 
pear in  both,  and  both  express  the  same 
thought, —  the  thought  that  it  is  vain  for 
men  to  strive  after  the  unattainable,  for 
in  so  doing  they  lose  sight  of  the  actual 
possibilities  of  human  life;  the  thought 
that  much  of  the  best  human  energy  goes 
to  waste  because  it  is  devoted  to  the  pur- 
suit of  ideals  that  are  indeed  beyond  the 
strength  of  man  to  realize.  In  the  first 
of  the  two  plays,  this  superhuman  ideal  is 
religious,  it  is  that  of  the  enthusiast  who 
accepts  literally  the  teaching  that  to  faith 
all  things  are  possible;  in  the  second,  the 

71 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

ideal  is  social,  it  is  that  of  the  reformer 
who  is  deluded  to  believe  that  one  re- 
sounding deed  of  terror  and  self-immola- 
tion for  the  cause  of  the  people  will  suffice 
to  overthrow  the  selfish  existing  order, 
and  create  for  the  toiling  masses  a  new 
heaven  upon  earth.  No  deeper  tragedies 
have  been  conceived  by  Bjornson  than 
these  two,  the  tragedy  of  the  saintlike 
Pastor  Sang,  who  believes  that  the  mir- 
acle of  his  wife's  restoration  to  health  has 
at  last  in  very  truth  been  wrought  by  his 
fervent  prayer,  and  finds  only  that  the 
ardor  of  his  faith  and  hers  has  brought 
death  instead  of  life  to  them  both, — the 
tragedy  of  his  son  Elias,  who  dies  like 
Samson  with  his  foes  for  an  equally  im- 
possible faith,  and  by  the  very  violence  of 
his  fanaticism  removes  the  goal  of  socialist 
endeavor  farther  than  ever  into  the  dim 
future.  Bjornson  has  written  nothing 
more  profoundly  moving  than  these  plays, 
72 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

with  their  twofold  treatment  of  essentially 
the  same  theme,  nor  has  he  written  any- 
thing which  offers  a  clearer  revelation  of 
his  own  rich  personality,  with  its  unfail- 
ing poetic  vision,  its  deep  tenderness,  and 
its  boundless  love  for  all  humankind.  The 
play,  "Geography  and  Love,"  which  came 
between  the  two  just  described,  is  an 
amusing  piece,  in  the  vein  of  light  and 
graceful  comedy,  which  satirizes  the  man 
with  a  hobby,  showing  how  he  uncon- 
sciously comes  to  neglect  his  wife  and 
family  through  absorption  in  his  work. 
The  author  was,  in  a  way,  taking  genial 
aim  at  himself  in  this  piece,  a  fact  which 
his  son  Bjorn,  who  played  the  principal 
part,  did  not  hesitate  to  emphasize.  "  Paul 
Lange  and  Tora  Parsberg,"  the  next  play, 
deals  with  the  passions  engendered  by  po- 
litical controversy,  and  made  much  un- 
pleasant stir  in  Norwegian  society  because 
certain   of   the  characters   and   situations 

73 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

were  unmistakeably  taken  from  real  life. 
After  these  plays  came  "Laboremus"  and 
"At  Storhove,"  both  concerned  with  sub- 
stantially the  same  theme,  which  is  that  of 
the  malign  influence  exerted  by  an  evil- 
minded  and  reckless  woman  upon  the  lives 
of  others.  From  a  different  point  of  view, 
we  may  say  that  the  subject  of  these  plays 
is  the  consecration  of  the  home.  This  has 
always  been  a  favorite  theme  with  Bjorn- 
son,  and  he  has  no  clearer  title  to  our 
gratitude  than  that  which  he  has  earned 
by  his  unfailing  insistence  upon  the  sanc- 
tity of  family  life,  its  mutual  confidences, 
and  its  common  joys.  Completing  the  list, 
we  have  "Daglannet,"  another  domestic 
drama  of  simple  structure,  and  "When 
the  New  Wine  Blooms,"  a  study  of  mod- 
ernity as  exemplified  in  the  young  woman 
of  to-day,  of  the  estrangement  that  too 
often  creeps  into  married  life,  and  of  the 


74 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJ5RNSON 

stirrings  that  prompt  men  of  middle  age 
to  seek  to  renew  the  joys  of  youth. 

During  the  years  that  have  passed  since 
the  pubHcation  of  ''Dust,"  Bjornson  has 
produced  four  volumes  of  fiction, — his 
two  great  novels,  a  third  novel  of  less  di- 
dactic mission,  and  a  second  collection  of 
short  stories.  The  first  of  the  novels, 
"Flags  Are  Flying  in  City  and  Harbor," 
saw  the  light  during  the  year  following 
the  publication  of  "A  Glove,"  and  the 
teaching  of  that  play  is  again  enforced 
with  uncompromising  logic  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  story.  The  work  has  two 
other  main  themes,  and  these  are  heredity 
and  education.  So  much  didactic  matter 
as  this  is  a  heavy  burden  for  any  novel  to 
carry,  and  a  lesser  man  than  Bjornson 
would  have  found  the  task  a  hopeless  one. 
That  he  should  have  succeeded  even  in 
making  a  fairly  readable  book  out  of  this 


75 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

material  would  have  been  remarkable,  and 
it  is  a  pronounced  artistic  triumph  that  the 
book  should  prove  of  such  absorbing-  in- 
terest. For  absorbingly  interesting  it  is, 
to  any  reader  who  is  willing  that  a  novel 
should  provide  something  more  than  en- 
tertainment, and  who  is  not  afraid  of  a 
work  of  fiction  that  compels  him  to  think 
as  he  reads.  The  principal  character  is  a 
man  descended  from  a  line  of  ancestors 
whose  lives  have  been  wild  and  lawless, 
and  who  have  wallowed  in  almost  every 
form  of  brutality  and  vice.  The  four  pre- 
ceding generations  of  the  race  are  depict- 
ed for  us  in  a  series  of  brief  but  masterly 
characterizations,  in  which  every  stroke 
tells,  and  we  witness  the  gradual  weaken- 
ing of  the  family  stock.  But  with  the  gen- 
eration just  preceding  the  main  action  of 
the  novel,  there  has  been  introduced  a  vig- 
orous strain  of  peasant  blood,  and  the  pro- 
cess of  regeneration  has  begun.  It  is  this 
76 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

process  that  goes  on  before  our  eyes.  It 
does  not  become  a  completed  process,  but 
the  prospect  is  bright  for  the  future,  and 
the  flags  that  fly  over  town  and  harbor 
in  the  closing  chapter  have  a  symboHcal 
significance,  for  they  announce  a  victory 
of  spirit  over  sense,  not  only  in  the  cases 
of  certain  among  the  individual  partici- 
pants in  the  action,  but  also  in  the  case  of 
the  whole  community  to  which  they  be- 
long. So  much  for  the  book  as  a  study  in 
heredity.  As  an  educational  tract,  it  has 
the  conspicuous  virtue  of  remaining  in 
close  touch  with  life  while  embodying  the 
spirit  of  modern  scientific  pedagogy.  The 
hero  of  the  book, — the  last  descendant  of 
a  race  struggling  for  moral  and  physical 
rehabilitation, — ^throws  himself  into  the 
work  of  education  with  an  energy  equal 
to  that  which  his  forbears  had  turned  into 
various  perverse  channels.  He  organizes  a 
school, — more  than  half  of  the  book,  in 
77 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

fact,  is  about  this  school  and  its  work, — 
and  seeks  to  introduce  a  system  of  training 
which  shall  shape  the  whole  character  of 
the  child,  a  school  in  which  truth  and  clean 
living  shall  be  inculcated  with  thorough- 
ness and  absolute  sincerity,  a  school  which 
shall  be  the  microcosm  of  the  world  out- 
side, or  rather  of  what  that  world  ought 
to  be.  Bjornson's  interest  in  education 
has  been  life-long;  for  many  years  it  had 
gone  astray  in  a  sort  of  Grundtvigian  fog, 
but  at  the  time  when  this  book  came  to  be 
written,  it  had  worked  its  way  out  into  the 
clear  light  of  reason.  If  the  future  should 
cease  to  care  for  this  work  as  a  piece  of 
literature,  it  will  still  look  back  to  it  as  to 
a  sort  of  nineteenth  century  "  Emile,"  and 
take  renewed  heart  from  its  inspiring  mes- 
sage. 

"In  God's  Ways,"  the  second  of  the 
two  great  novels,  is  a  work  of  which  it  is 
difficult  to  speak  in  terms  of  measured 
78 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

praise.  With  its  delicate  and  vital  delinea- 
tions of  character,  its  rich  sympathy  and 
depth  of  tragic  pathos,  its  plea  for  the 
sacredness  of  human  life,  and  its  protest 
against  the  religious  and  social  prejudice 
by  which  life  is  so  often  misshapen,  this 
book  is  an  epitome  of  all  the  ideas  and 
feelings  that  have  gone  to  the  making  of 
the  author's  personality,  and  have  received 
such  manifold  expression  in  his  works. 
It  is  a  simple  story,  concerned  mainly  with 
four  people,  in  no  way  outwardly  conspicu- 
ous, yet  here  united  by  the  poet's  art  into 
a  relationship  from  which  issue  some  of 
the  deepest  of  social  questions,  and  which 
enforces  in  the  most  appealing  terms  the 
fundamental  teaching  of  all  the  work  of 
his  mature  years.  First  of  all,  we  have 
the  boyhood  of  the  two  friends  who  are 
afterwards  to  grow  apart  in  their  sympa- 
thies; the  one  alert  of  mind,  imaginative, 
open  to  every  intellectual  influence,  also 
79 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

impetuous  and  hot-blooded;  the  other  shy 
and  intellectually  stolid,  but  good  to  the 
very  core,  and  moved  by  the  strongest  of 
altruistic  impulses.  In  accordance  with 
their  respective  characters,  the  first  of 
these  youths  becomes  a  physician,  and  the 
other  a  clergyman.  Then  we  have  the 
sister  of  the  physician,  who  becomes  the 
wife  of  the  clergyman,  a  noble,  proud,  self- 
centred  nature,  finely  strung  to  the  inmost 
fibre  of  her  being.  Then  we  have  a  wom- 
an of  the  other  sort,  clinging,  abnormally 
sensitive,  a  child  when  the  years  of  child- 
hood are  over,  and  made  the  victim  of  a 
shocking  child-marriage  to  a  crippled  old 
man.  She  it  is  whom  the  physician  loves, 
and  persuades  to  a  legal  dissolution  of  her 
immoral  union.  After  some  years,  he 
makes  her  his  wife,  and  their  happiness 
would  be  complete  were  it  not  for  the  so- 
cial and  religious  prejudice  aroused.  The 
clergyman,  whom  years  of  service  in  the 
80 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

state  church  have  hardened  into  bigotry, 
is  officially,  as  it  were,  compelled  to  con- 
demn the  friend  of  his  boyhood,  and  even 
the  sister,  for  a  time  grown  untrue  to  her 
own  generous  nature,  shares  in  the  es- 
trangement. In  vain  does  the  physician 
seek  to  shelter  his  wife  from  the  chill  of 
her  environment.  She  droops,  pines  away, 
and  finally  dies,  gracious,  lovable,  and  even 
forgiving  to  the  last.  Then  the  death 
angel  comes  close  to  the  clergyman  and  his 
wife,  hovering  over  their  only  child,  and 
at  last  the  barrier  of  formalism  and  preju- 
dice and  religious  bigotry  is  swept  away 
from  their  minds.  Their  natural  sympa- 
thies, long  repressed,  resume  full  sway, 
and  they  realize  how  deeply  they  have 
sinned  toward  the  dead  woman.  The  sis- 
ter seeks  a  reconciliation  with  her  brother, 
but  he  repulses  her,  and  gives  her  his 
wife's  private  diary  to  read.  In  this 
journal  intime  she  finds  the  full  revelation 
8i 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

of  the  gentle  spirit  that  has  been  done  to 
death,  and  she  feels  that  the  very  salvation 
of  her  life  and  soul  depend  upon  winning 
her  brother's  forgiveness.  The  closing 
chapter,  in  which  the  final  reconciliation 
occurs,  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  in  all 
fiction;  its  pathos  is  of  the  deepest  and  the 
most  moving,  and  he  must  be  callous  of 
soul,  indeed,  who  can  read  it  with  dry 
eyes. 

If  we  were  to  search  the  whole  of 
Bjornson's  writings  for  the  single  passage 
which  should  most  completely  typify  his 
message  to  his  fellowmen, — not  Norwe- 
gians alone,  but  all  mankind, — the  choice 
would  have  to  rest  upon  the  words  spoken 
from  the  pulpit  by  the  clergyman  of  this 
novel,  on  the  Sunday  following  the  cer- 
tainty of  his  child's  recovery. 

"To-day  a  man  spoke  from  the  pulpit  of  the 
church  about  what  he  had  learned. 

"Namely,  about  what  first  concerns  us  all. 
"One  forgets  it  in  his  strenuous  endeavor,  a 
82 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

second  in  his  zeal  for  conflict,  a  third  in  his 
backward  vision,  a  fourth  in  the  conceit  of  his 
own  wisdom,  a  fifth  in  his  daily  routine,  and  we 
have  all  learned  it  more  or  less  ill.  For  should 
I  ask  you  who  hear  me  now,  you  would  all  re- 
ply thoughtlessly,  and  just  because  I  ask  you 
from  this  place,  'Faith  is  first.' 

"No,  in  very  truth,  it  is  not.  Watch  over 
your  child,  as  it  struggles  for  breath  on  the 
outermost  verge  of  life,  or  see  your  wife  follow 
the  child  to  that  outermost  verge,  beside  her- 
self for  anxiety  and  sleeplessness, — then  love 
will  teach  you  that  life  comes  first.  And  never 
from  this  day  on  will  I  seek  God  or  God's  will 
in  any  form  of  words,  in  any  sacrament,  or  in 
any  book  or  any  place,  as  if  He  were  first  and 
foremost  to  be  found  there;  no,  life  is  first  and 
foremost — life  as  we  win  it  from  the  depths 
of  despair,  in  the  victory  of  the  light,  in  the 
grace  of  self-devotion,  in  our  intercourse  with 
living  human  kind.  God's  supreme  word  to  us 
is  life,  our  highest  worship  of  Him  is  love  for 
the  living.  This  lesson,  self-evident  'as  it  is, 
was  needed  by  me  more  than  by  most  others. 
This  it  is  that  in  various  ways  and  upon  many 
grounds  I  have  hitherto  rejected, — and  of  late 
most  of  all.  But  never  more  shall  words  be 
the  highest  for  me,  nor  symbols,  but  the 
eternal  revelation  of  life.  Never  more  will  I 
freeze  fast  in  doctrine,  but  let  the  warmth  of 
life  melt  my  will.  Never  will  I  condemn  men 
by  the  dogmas  of  old  time  justice,  unless  they 
fit  with  our  own  time's  gospel  of  love.     Never, 

83 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

for  God's  sake!  And  this  because  I  believe 
in  Him,  the  God  of  Life,  and  His  never  ending 
revelation  in  life  itself." 


Here  is  a  gospel,  indeed,  one  that  needs 
no  church  for  its  promulgation,  and  no 
ceremonial  for  the  enhancement  of  its  im- 
pressiveness.  It  is  a  gospel,  moreover, 
that  is  based  upon  no  foundation  of  pre- 
carious logic,  but  finds  its  premises  in  the 
healthy  instincts  of  the  natural  man.  It 
is  no  small  thing  to  have  thus  found  the 
way,  and  to  have  helped  others  likewise  to 
find  the  way,  out  of  the  mists  of  supersti- 
tion, through  the  valleys  of  doubt  and 
despondency,  athwart  the  thickets  of  pre- 
judice and  bigotry  with  all  their  furtive 
foemen,  up  to  these  sunlit  heights  of  se- 
renity. 

"Mary"  is  less  explicit  in  its  teaching 
than  the  two  great  novels  just  summar- 
ized, but  what  it  misses  in  didacticism  it 
more  than  gains  in  art.    The  radiant  crea- 
84 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

ture  who  gives  her  name  to  the  book  is 
one  of  Bjornson's  most  exquisite  figures. 
She  is  the  very  embodiment  of  youthful 
womanhood,  filled  with  the  joy  of  life, 
and  bringing  sunshine  wherever  she  goes. 
Yet  this  temperament  leads  to  her  undo- 
ing, or  what  would  be  the  undoing  of  any 
woman  less  splendid  in  character.  But 
the  strength  that  impels  her  to  the  mis- 
step that  comes  so  near  to  having  tragic 
consequences  is  also  the  strength  that 
saves  her  when  chastened  by  suffering.  In 
her  the  author  "gives  us  the  common  stuff 
of  life,"  says  an  English  critic,  "gives  it 
us  simple*  and  direct.  There  is  nothing 
here  of  Ibsen's  pathology.  We  are  in  the 
sun.  Her  most  hideous  blunder  cannot 
undo  a  woman's  soul.  Bjornson  knows 
that  the  deed  is  nothing  at  all.  It  is  the 
soul  behind  the  deed  that  he  sees.  Not 
everything  that  cometh  out  of  a  man  de- 
fileth  a  man.  At  all  events,  so  it  is  here : 
85 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

triumph  and  joy  built  upon  an  act  that — 
as  the  PhiHstines  would  say — has  defiled 
forever."  As  a  triumph  of  sheer  creation, 
this  figure  is  hardly  overmatched  any- 
where in  the  author's  portrait  gallery  of 
women. 

If  Bjornson's  essential  teaching  may  be 
found  in  a  single  page,  as  has  above  been 
suggested,  his  personality  evades  all  such 
summarizing.  In  the  present  essay,  he  has 
been  considered  as  a  writer  merely, — poet, 
dramatist,  novelist, — but  the  man  is  vast- 
ly more  than  that.  His  other  activities 
have  been  hinted  at,  indeed,  but  nothing 
adequate  has  been  said  about  them.  The 
director  of  three  theatres,  the  editor  of 
three  newspapers  and  the  contributor  to 
many  others,  the  promoter  of  schools  and 
patriotic  organizations,  the  participant  in 
many  political  campaigns,  the  lay  preacher 
of  private  and  public  morals,  the  chosen 
orator  of  his  nation  for  all  great  occasions, 
86 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

— these  are  some  of  the  characters  in 
which  we  must  view  hirri  to  form  anything 
like  a  complete  conception  of  his  many- 
sided  individuality.  Take  the  matter  of 
oratory  alone,  and  it  is  perhaps  true  that 
he  has  influenced  as  many  people  by  the 
living  word  as  he  has  by  the  printed  page. 
He  has  addressed  hundreds  of  audiences 
in  the  three  Scandinavian  countries  and  in 
Finland,  he  has  spoken  to  more  than  twen- 
ty thousand  at  a  time,  and  his  winged 
speech  has  gone  straight  home  to  his  hear- 
ers. All  who  ever  heard  him  will  agree 
that  his  oratory  was  of  the  most  persua- 
sive and  vital  impressiveness.  Jaeger  at- 
tempts to  describe  it  in  the  following 
words : —  -.. 

"It  is  eloquence  of  a  very  distinctive  type;  ] 
its  most  characteristic  quality  is  its  wealth  of  ^ 
color;  it  finds  expression  for  every  mood,  from 
the  lightest  to  the  most  serious,  from  the  most 
vigorous  to  the  most  delicate  and  tender.  Now 
his  words  ring  like  the  voice  of  doom,  filled 
with  thunder  and  lightning,  now  they  become 

87 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

soft  and  persuasive  with  smiling  mien.  With 
a  single  cadence,  or  a  play  of  the  facial  mus- 
cles, or  a  slight  gesture,  he  can  portray  a  per- 
son, a  situation,  or  an  object,  so  that  it  ap- 
pears living  in  the  sight  of  his  hearers.  And 
what  the  word  alone  cannot  do,  is  accomplished 
in  the  most  brilliant  manner  by  the  virtuosity 
of  his  delivery.  He  does  not  speak  his  words, 
he  presents  them;  they  take  bodily  form  and 
seem  alive." 

In  his  more  intimate  relationships,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  face  to  face  conversation  or 
in  the  home  circle,  the  man  takes  on  a 
quite  different  aspect;  the  prophet  has  be- 
come the  friend,  the  impassioned  preacher 
has  become  the  genial  story  teller,  and 
shares  the  gladsome  or  mirthful  mood  of 
the  hour.  Such  a  personality  as  this  may 
be  analyzed;  it  defies  any  concise  synthesis. 
One  resorts  to  figures  of  speech,  and  they 
were  abundantly  resorted  to  by  those  who 
paid  him  the  tribute  of  their  admiration 
and  love  upon  the  occasion  of  his  seven- 
tieth anniversary.  Let  us  take  an  instance 
at  random  from  one  of  these  tributes. 
88 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

"The  cataract  that  roars  down  to  the  free 
foaming  sea.  The  mountain  with  its  snowclad 
peaks  towering  up  into  the  immensity  of  the 
starry  heavens.  The  rustling  of  the  woodland 
above  the  blossom-spangled  and  smiling 
meadows,  the  steep  uptowering,  the  widely 
growing,  and  the  joyously  smiling.  At  once 
the  soft  melody  that  stirs  the  heart  and  the 
strong  wind  that  sweeps  over  the  Northern 
lands." 

This  concourse  of  metaphors  givessome 

slight  idea  of  the  way  in  which  Bjornson's 

personality  affected  those  who  came  into 

contact  with  it.     The  description  may  be 

supplemented  by  a  few  bits  of  anecdote 

and  reminiscence.     The  composer  Grieg 

contributes  the  following  incident  of  the 

old  days  in  Norway : — 

"It  was  Christmas  eve  of  1868  at  the  Bjorn- 
sons  in  Christiania.  They  lived  then  in  the 
Rosenkrantzgade.  My  wife  and  I  were,  as  far 
as  I  can  remember,  the  only  guests.  The  chil- 
dren were  very  boisterous  in  their  glee.  In 
the  middle  of  the  floor  an  immense  Christmas 
tree  was  enthroned  and  brightly  lighted.  All 
the  servant-folk  came  in,  and  Bjornson  spoke, 
beautifully  and  warmly,  as  he  well  knows  how 
to  do.     '  Now  you  shall  play  a  hymn,  Grieg,' 

89 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJ5RNSON 

he  said,  and  although  I  did  not  quite  like  the 
notion  of  doing  organist's  work,  I  naturally 
complied  without  a  murmur.  It  was  one  of 
Grundtvig's  hymns  in  32  —  thirty-two  verses. 
I  resigned  myself  to  my  fate  with  stoicism. 
At  the  beginning  I  kept  myself  awake,  but  the 
endless  repetitions  had  a  soporific  effect.  Lit- 
tle by  little  I  became  as  stupid  as  a  medium. 
When  we  had  at  last  got  through  with  all  the 
verses,  Bjornson  said:  'Isn't  that  fine.  Now 
I  will  read  it  for  you!'  And  so  we  got  all 
thirty-two  verses  once  more.  I  was  complete- 
ly overawed." 

When  the  poet  purchased  his  country  es- 
tate which  was  his  home  from  the  late  sev- 
enties to  the  end  of  his  Hfe,  his  coming 
was  looked  forward  to  with  mingled  feel- 
ings by  the  good  country  folk  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. Kristofer  Janson  thus  tells  the 
story  of  his  arrival : 

"His  coming  was  anticipated  with  a  certain 
anxiety  and  apprehension,  for  was  he  not  a 
'horrid  radical'?  The  dean  in  particular 
thought  that  he  might  be  a  menace  to  the  safe 
spiritual  slumber  of  the  village.  As  the  dean 
one  day  was  driving  through  the  village  in  his 
carriole,  just  where  the  road  turns  sharply  by 
the    bridge    below    Aulestad,    he    met    another 

90 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

carriole  which  was  rapidly  driving  that  way 
and  in  it  a  man  who,  without  respect  for  the 
clerical  vehicle,  shouted  with  all  the  strength 
of  his  lungs:  'Half  the  road!'  The  dean 
turned  aside,  saying  with  a  sigh:  'Has  Bjorn- 
son  come  to  the  Gausdal  at  last?' 

"It  was  indeed  so,  and  he  showed  his  colors 
at  the  start.  The  same  dean  and  Bjornson 
became  the  best  of  friends  afterwards,  and 
found  much  sport  in  interchanging  genial  jests 
whenever  they  met." 

Frits  Thaulow,  the  painter,  thus  wrote 
to  Bjornson  reminding  him  of  a  festive 
gathering  of  students : 

"The  manager  came  in  and  announced  with 
a  loud  voice  that  it  was  past  twelve.  Then  you 
sprang  up. 

"'Bring  champagne!  Now  I  will  speak  of 
what  comes  after  twelve  o'clock!  of  all  that 
lies  beyond  the  respectable  hour  for  retiring! 
For  the  hour  when  fancy  awakens  and  fills  us 
with  longings  for  the  world  of  wonderland; 
then  the  painter  sees  only  the  dim  outline  in 
the  moonlight,  then  the  musician  hears  the  si- 
lence, then  the  poet  after  his  thoughtful  day 
feels  sprouting  the  first  shoots  of  the  next. 
After  twelve  freedom  begins.  The  day's  tu- 
mult is  stilled,  and  the  voice  within  becomes 
audible.' 

"Thus  you  spoke,  and  'after  twelve'  became 
a  watchword  with  us. 

91 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

"Many  a  spark  has  been  kindled  in  your 
soul  by  the  quiet  evening  time.  But  later  in 
life,  when  you  become  a  chieftain  in  the  battle, 
broad  daylight  also  made  its  demands  upon 
you.  Like  the  sun  you  shone  upon  us  and 
made  the  best  that  was  in  us  to  grow,  but  I 
shall  always  keep  a  deep  artistic  affection  for 
what  comes  'after  twelve.'" 

Henrik    Cavling    tells    the    following 

story  of  the  poet  in  Paris : 

"It  was  one  of  Bjornson's  peculiarities  to  go 
out  as  a  rule  without  any  money  in  his  pocket. 
He  neither  owned  a  purse  nor  knew  the  French 
coins.  His  personal  expenditures  were  restrict- 
ed to  the  books  he  bought,  and  now  and  then  a 
theatre  ticket.  One  day  he  came  excitedly  into 
the  sitting-room,  and  asked: 

"'Who  took  my  five  franc  piece?'  It  was 
a  five  franc  piece  that  he  had  got  somewhere 
or  other  and  had  stuck  in  his  pocket  to  buy  a 
theatre  ticket  with.  It  turned  out  that  the  maid 
had  found  it  and  given  it  to  Fru  Bjornson. 
For  it  seemed  quite  unthinkable  to  her  that 
the  master  should  have  any  money  to  take  out 
with  him. 

"This  complete  indifference  of  Bjornson  to 
small  matters  sometimes  proved  annoying.  In 
this  connection  I  may  tell  of  a  little  trip  he 
once  took  with  Jonas  Lie. 

"The  two  poets,  who  did  not  live  far  apart, 
had  long  counted  with  pleasure  upon  a  trip  to 

92 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

Pere  Lachaise,  where  they  wished  to  visit  Al- 
fred de  Musset's  grave.  At  last  the  day  came, 
and  with  big  soft  hats  on  their  heads,  and  en- 
gaged earnestly  in  conversation,  they  drove 
away  through  Paris. 

"When  they  came  to  Pere  Lachaise,  and 
wanted  to  enter  the  cemetery,  the  driver 
stopped  them  and  asked  for  his  pay.  Then  it 
appeared  that  neither  had  any  money,  which 
they  smilingly  explained,  and  asked  him  in  bad 
French  to  wait  and  drive  them  home  again. 
But  the  two  gentlemen  with  the  big  soft  hats 
had  not  inspired  the  driver  with  any  marked 
degree  of  confidence.  He  made  a  scene,  and 
attracted  a  great  crowd  of  the  boys,  loafers, 
and  well-dressed  Frenchmen  who  always  col- 
lect on  critical  occasions.  The  end  of  the  affair 
was  that  the  poets  had  to  get  into  their  cab 
again  and  drive  all  the  long  way  back  without 
having  had  a  glimpse  of  the  grave.  When  they 
reached  Lie's  lodgings,  Lie  went  in  to  get  some 
money,  while  Bjornson  sat  in  the  cab  as  a 
hostage.  Nevertheless,  both  poets  maintained 
that  they  had  had  a  pleasant  expedition.  A 
Norwegian  question,  which  had  accidentally 
come  up  between  them,  had  made  them  forget 
all  about  Alfred  de  Musset." 

Finally,  a  story  may  be  given  that  is  told 

by  Bjornson  himself. 

"  I  had  a  pair  of  old  boots  that  I  wanted  to 
give  to  a  beggar.    But  just  as  I  was  going  to 

93 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

give  them  to  him,  I  began  to  wonder  whether 
Karoline  had  not  some  use  for  them,  since  she 
usually  gave  such  things  to  beggars.  So  I  took 
the  boots  in  my  hand,  and  went  downstairs  to 
ask  her,  but  on  the  way  I  got  a  little  worked 
up  because  I  did  not  quite  dare  to  give  them 
to  the  beggar  myself.  And  the  further  I  went 
down  the  steps,  the  more  wrathful  I  got,  until 
I  stood  over  her.  And  then  I  was  so  angry 
that  I  had  to  bluster  at  her  as  if  she  had  done 
me  a  grievous  wrong.  But  she  could  not  un- 
derstand a  word  of  what  I  said,  and  looked  at 
me  with  such  amazement,  that  I  could  not 
keep  from  bursting  into  laughter." 

From  his  early  years,  Bjornson  kept  in 
touch  with  the  modern  intellectual  move- 
ment by  mingling  with  the  people  of  other 
lands  than  his  own.  Besides  his  visits  to 
Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Finland,  he  made 
many  lengthy  sojourns  in  the  chief  con- 
tinental centres  of  civilization,  in  Munich, 
Rome,  and  Paris.  The  longest  of  his  for- 
eign journeys  was  that  which  brought  him 
to  the  United  States  in  the  winter  of  1880 
81,  for  the  purpose  of  addressing  his  fel- 
low countrymen  in  the  Northwest.  His 
94 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

home  for  the  last  thirty  years  and  more 
has  been  his  estate  of  Aulestad  in  the 
Gausdal,  a  region  of  Southern  Norway. 
Here  he  has  been  a  model  farmer,  and 
here,  surrounded  by  his  family, — wife, 
children,  and  grandchildren, — his  patri- 
archal presence  has  given  dignity  to  the 
household,  and  united  its  members  in  a 
common  bond  of  love.  Hither  have  come 
streams  of  guests,  friends  old  and  new,  to 
enjoy  his  generous  hospitality.  There  has 
been  provision  for  all,  both  bed  and  board, 
and  the  heartiest  of  welcomes  from  the 
host.  And  the  stranger  from  abroad  has 
been  greeted,  as  like  as  not,  by  the  sight 
of  his  own  country's  flag  streaming  from 
a  staff  before  the  house,  and  foreshadow- 
ing the  personal  greeting  that  awaited  him 
upon  the  threshold. 

Bjornson  died  in  Paris  (where  he  had 
been  spending  the  winter,  as  was  his  cus- 
tom for  many  years  past),  April  26,  1910. 
95 


BJORNSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

He  had  been  ill  for  several  months,  and 
only  an  extraordinarily  robust  constitu- 
tion enabled  him  to  make  a  partial  recov- 
ery from  the  crisis  of  the  preceding"  Feb- 
ruary, when  his  death  had  been  hourly  ex- 
pected. The  news  of  his  death  occasioned 
demonstrations  of  grief  not  only  in  his 
own  country,  but  also  throughout  the  civ- 
ilized world.  Every  honor  that  a  nation 
can  bestow  upon  its  illustrious  dead  was 
decreed  him  by  King  and  Storthing;  a 
warship  was  despatched  to  bear  his  re- 
mains to  Christiania,  and  the  pomp  and 
circumstance  of  a  state  funeral  acclaimed 
the  sense  of  the  nation's  loss. 


96 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

'•<■]  \y  Ccl.Lib. 

MAY21194S         l-'^-^Q 

^"^'  APRl      1963 


H0V4    ^951^ 
JUL  5     1952 

DEC  1  5  1953 
^QV9-^959 

NOV  301959 


Kortii  I,-!. 
iiiiM-i:!.'3ii(:!.iMi) 


RECEDED 


wii\n6^^^^ 


4-9 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  274  687 


